Thirty patients were waiting on trolleys in Letterkenny University Hospital yesterday. There were 2,000 instances of patients waiting on trolleys in Letterkenny University Hospital over the course of 2016, and that figure increased to 5,000 last year. When the Taoiseach visited County Donegal two weeks ago, he decided not to visit the hospital to meet management and to assess the pressure being experienced by staff.

Last year, the hospital put to the Taoiseach a proposal, costing €1.8 million, to provide additional staff to reopen a 19-bed ward that would alleviate some of the pressure on the hospital. It has put that proposal to the Taoiseach again this year. Will he take the steps necessary to ensure the funding is delivered to alleviate some of the pressure on the hospital so the patients of Donegal, in particular, and other counties will not be facing a crisis in which they will be on trolleys and in which staff will be asked to deal with unacceptable working conditions that are simply atrocious?

Overall, the number of patients on trolleys this morning was 291. That is 18.5% down on the figure for this day last year, and 17.56% down on the figure for this day two years ago. I appreciate, as always, that the figures vary from hospital to hospital. One could have very high numbers in one hospital and a figure of zero, or of only one or two, in others. Extra beds were brought into the system this year. As the Deputy knows, a decision was taken by Fianna Fáil during the boom to reduce the number of beds in acute hospitals. We reversed that decision around 2014 or 2015 and have been increasing the number of acute beds since then. I will not be making individual decisions on which hospitals the extra beds go to, but there will be extra beds again next year.