‘Other counties have to help the ambulance service in Donegal’
From January to August 2026, NAS crews conveyed 8,887 patients to Letterkenny University Hospital Emergency Department
The HSE Regional Health Forum heard that ambulances serving Donegal regularly come from Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon.
“Other counties have to help the ambulance service in Donegal,” Sinn Féin councillor Gerry McMonagle stated. “Donegal is a massive county; if you are coming from Sligo or Leitrim and a lot of times, Roscommon, it is a fair distance to travel to the west or the north of the county.”
This is due to a system of “Dynamic Deployment”, a model enabling the nearest available ambulance to be dispatched to the most urgent call irrespective of county boundaries. It also aims to redistribute available resources from areas where resources are temporarily concentrated to areas where ambulance cover is reduced.
Cllr McMonagle commended the good work that the National Ambulance Service (NAS) do but queried whether there are plans to increase the fleet and the personnel in a bid to have “more ambulances available in the county as opposed to waiting for other counties to pull us out?
“We're still at the same number of teams out there these last number of years and yet we've increased in population. There's bigger demand on the service and yet your service hasn't been increased. The amount of money that the HSE is spending on private hospitals, if that could be invested in the NAS, we wouldn't have multiple ambulances queued up at Letterkenny, which happens quite regularly.
“I think the NAS needs to look at its quota and its operating model and we do need to increase the services in the NAS for Donegal. Particularly around this time now, with the hospital experiencing really high numbers.”
From January to August 2026, NAS crews conveyed 8,887 patients to Letterkenny University Hospital Emergency Department, compared with 8,752 during the same period in 2025.
Brendan McGovern, NAS General Manager Area Operations – West North West, acknowledged the increase from the data provided.
“That is a compounded increase year on year and it's due to pressures on the wider system, including our own resources. It's reflective of a broader system-wide problem. I do agree that we need more resources. There is a part we'll probably have to recognise where a lot of those additional resources would be allocated to the hospitals with the same pressures, so it is a broad piece of work
“In 2026 we are increasing the resources in Donegal and specifically Killybegs we intend to have another Sunday service running there by the end of the year, with one additional ambulance. Lots done, but lots more to do and I acknowledge that.”
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