Senator Pádraig Mac Lochlainn has called on the Minister for Health, Simon Harris to urgently revise the allocation of funding to the health service in Donegal for 2017.
He made the call as he raised Donegal’s ongoing hospital and health service crisis in the Seanad again today.
He also demanded that the Minister come into the Seanad to hear the stories and the experiences of families from Donegal and across the State as a result of this crisis.
Senator Mac Lochlainn said “I have repeatedly highlighted the funding discrimination that our major county hospital has endured. Hospitals in Dublin are being allocated as much as three times the budget received by Letterkenny University Hospital based on inpatient numbers.
“This discrimination results in the appalling spectacle of so many of our elderly and sick patients on trolleys and leaves 15,000 Donegal people languishing on hospital waiting lists. It also results in hospital staff working in impossibly stressful conditions.”
He added this is not just a ongoing funding crisis for Letterkenny University Hospital, it is a whole of health service funding crisis.
He added that for years now, governments have also starved our community hospitals, our nursing units, our primary care system and our home care system of the necessary funding.
“It is clear that the recent budget for 2017 passed by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil is nowhere enough to address the scale of this crisis. I am calling on the Minister for Health, Simon Harris to urgently revise that budget and I also call again on the Fianna Fáil party to demand this too as part of their “confidence and supply” agreement.
“I have also demanded that Minister Harris come into the Seanad and hear at first hand the stories and experiences of too many families in Donegal and across the State as a result of this crisis caused by years of chronic under investment”.
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