I raised this issue with the Tánaiste last week. University Hospital Letterkenny has a serious crisis. The representatives of nurses, doctors and paramedics have spoken about the impossible conditions they are being asked to work in. There is one nurse for every 20 patients. Some patients have been waiting between ten and 14 hours in ambulances outside the emergency department, including recently a 77-year-old man in a very serious condition. I am asking the Taoiseach, as I asked the Tánaiste, to ensure that the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, gets up to Donegal urgently to meet the organisations representing the staff, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, Fórsa, SIPTU, and meets the hospital management to address once and for all the health crisis in Donegal which has arisen due to neglect and underfunding.

I will certainly speak to the Minister for Health. We have already spoken to the HSE about the situation in Letterkenny and will continue to do so.

There is a problem at the moment in terms of what we discussed earlier with Deputy Joan Collins on the impact of the current wave of Covid on hospitals, particularly model two and model three hospitals, and so forth. First, we have the bed capacity issue in terms of isolation of patients who have Covid and then there is the egress because so many nursing homes and elderly care centres are now centres of outbreak and they cannot take in patients. I think more than 600 patients have been officially discharged from hospitals but cannot leave the hospitals because of the fact they cannot go into centres where there has been an outbreak. There are real challenges facing emergency departments. I acknowledge the point the Deputy made about Letterkenny.