A DONEGAL TD has admitted that he fears a new hospital trust which includes Letterkenny could lead to the loss of services.
Responding to the announcement by the Minister for Health, James Reilly that Letterkenny General Hospital is to be grouped with hospitals in Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo and Galway in advance of the establishment of a Western Hospitals Trust, Pádraig Mac Lochlainn said that “it is now more important than ever that Letterkenny General Hospital is upgraded to Regional status if it is not be subsumed by Sligo and Galway Hospitals with the loss of services and resources”.
Deputy Mac Lochlainn said: ”Despite all the fine rhetoric about this new Hospitals Group, the bottom line is that for the people of Donegal, the proof will be in the pudding. Will Letterkenny General Hospital be upgraded? Will the hospital budget increase? Will the numbers of consultants, junior doctors and nurses increase? Will Letterkenny General Hospital at last gets its fair share of resources?
“Late last year, my colleague, Deputy Pearse Doherty and I revealed that the management and staff at Letterkenny General Hospital had endured a scandalous and systematic underfunding for many years.
“We demonstrated that per 1000 inpatients, Letterkenny General Hospital receives the lowest budgetary allocation of any hospital in the state and the lowest allocation of hospital staff in the state. Dublin hospitals have been receiving between two and three times the budgetary allocation that Letterkenny General Hospital receives per 1000 inpatients.”
The TD went on: “Despite the fact Letterkenny General Hospital caters for almost 21,000 inpatients, making it the seventh highest in the state; they have yet to be given the designation of a Regional Hospital.
“This costs the hospital up to two million euro per annum and puts services in the hospital under threat as hospitals with higher status are prioritised. Sligo is designated as a Regional Hospital despite having five thousand less inpatients per year and ranking as the 17th highest in the state. Sligo Regional Hospital also receives a higher annual budget than LGH.”
He concluded: ”Deputy Pearse Doherty and I will be monitoring these new developments very closely. We demand fairness for the people of Donegal and nothing less.”