171 doctors from Donegal have demanded an urgent meeting with the Minister for Health over the exclusion of Letterkenny from the Surgical Hub Plan.
They say they feel as though patients in the county are not treated as equals in the health system.
In the letter to Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, 171 senior doctors and local GPs have called the meeting, to address what they say is a ‘critical threat to to patient care and health equality in the North West.’
They say the decision by the HSE to put forward Sligo University Hospital as the new surgical hub is ‘flawed, unjustified and deeply damaging.’
Donegal GP Padraig McGuinness says, given Donegal has a larger population than Sligo, Leitrim, South Donegal, and Cavan combined, the decision to overlook LUH ‘ignores both population need and geographic logic’.
LUH receives half the per-patient funding compared to SUH, has the longest waiting times among all Model 3 hospitals and LUH was allocated just 0.3% of the national capital budget in the 2025 HSE Capital Programme.
The HSE had floated a proposal for an ambulatory care centre in LUH, but doctors argue this is ‘an inadequate substitute lacking ring-fenced funding, staffing plans, or timelines.’
Consultants and GPs across Donegal are united in their demand for a face-to-face meeting with the Health Minister, a moratorium on final decisions regarding the hub’s location until a fair, evidence-based comparison is completed and an independent review of the HSE’s rationale for selecting Sligo University Hospital over Letterkenny University Hospital.
The full letter:
