Letterkenny University Hospital has sixth-highest number of in-patients but is ranked 13th for funding

Letterkenny University Hospital has the sixth-highest number of in-patients in the country but is ranked 13th in terms of funding, figures released by Sinn Féin show.
The 2019 figures show the hospital receives a budget of just over €6,000 per in-patient. The highest budget per patient goes to St James Hospital in Dublin at just under €17,000.
The Letterkenny hospital is ranked 14th in terms of the number of consultants and 12th for the number of nurses and midwives.
The top six funded hospitals in the State, located in Dublin, Cork and Galway, all receive from two to three times the annual budget of Letterkenny University Hospital.
Commenting on the figures, Donegal Sinn Fein TD Pádraig MacLochlainn called for the "funding discrimination" to end.
"The blatant funding discrimination against our county's major hospital and indeed, against the people of Donegal continues,” he said.
He said that while it is accepted that some of the hospitals in Dublin, Cork and Galway have additional national responsibilities, “the huge gaps in funding, and the numbers of consultants and nurses and midwives just can not be explained or justified”.
“I have raised this discrimination along with my party colleagues in Donegal in the years before the pandemic and the government and the HSE refused to act. We will continue to publish evidence of this discrimination and what we regard to be a scandal that has serious health impacts on families across this county. There are now over 20,000 people on the Letterkenny hospital waiting list. This willful neglect also puts impossible pressure on the doctors and nurses who work at Letterkenny University Hospital.
“I am challenging the Minister for Health and his government colleagues in Donegal to make an urgent statement in response to this evidence that I am publishing today and to outline to the people of Donegal what they are going to do about it, starting from the upcoming budget next month."