Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

While I am disappointed that the Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, is not present, everything I am about to say I have said to him directly and have put in a letter to him. He has been in County Donegal on several occasions, but I will reiterate the points made today.

Letterkenny University Hospital is the sixth largest hospital in the State. It caters for over 23,000 inpatients every year, but one would not know it from its budget. The budget allocated to it is one third of that allocated to the four major hospitals in Dublin. I appreciate that they deal with specialties and deserve more money, but a sum three times more cannot be justified.

The implications for Letterkenny University Hospital are profound. The number of patients on trolleys is the highest ever in the history of the State. Sick and elderly patients have to wait a long time and are then left in the undignified situation where they are left on a trolley or in a bed which is not specific to their needs. Many are forced to be on trolleys in the hospital. The waiting list runs to almost 17,000. If we include those waiting in south Donegal to access Sligo hospital, one in eight people in my home county is on a waiting list that is growing all the time. I note that the previous Minister, now Senator James Reilly, acknowledged that there had been years of under-investment in the health service. Now we have a crisis. The recent budget was an opportunity. Deputy Pearse Doherty and I put together a document entitled, The Need to Invest in Letterkenny University Hospital, which we submitted to the Government, the HSE and Saolta. We expected to see a clear signal in the recent budget that in 2018 there would be a serious attempt to address the crisis in Letterkenny University Hospital and elsewhere, but no new net investment was provided for. Given the expenditure already committed to and the need to allow for growth in the population, there is no new investment. The crisis in Letterkenny University Hospital will continue. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael supported the budget. Both parties need to take responsibility for the continuing crisis in the health service and the fact that it will not diminish in 2018 because of the failure to provide adequate funding. Instead, the Government has provided for marginal tax cuts across the board. That is wrong when there is a crisis and people are suffering throughout the State.

A short stay ward with 20 beds in Letterkenny University Hospital has not been deployed for a long time. The hospital has asked for approximately €2 million to open the ward to take the pressure off the emergency and other departments, but that funding has not been forthcoming. It really needs investment justice in order to receive a fair share of investment that will reflect the number of patients for whom it caters. It is a major hospital; it is the sixth largest in the State, yet it is getting a fraction of the investment hospitals in Dublin receive. The funding allocation system for hospitals is totally wrong. There is no good in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael politicians speaking on their local radio stations and pleading on this issue when they have just passed a budget that will not address the crisis in 2018. That was a huge mistake, but it was a choice they made. I believe the implications of that choice will be evident in the hospital system in County Donegal and elsewhere this winter and in 2018. That is completely unacceptable and wrong.