Taoiseach Enda Kenny remarked that the floods had "destroyed a first class medical facility" and called the damage "very substantial – records lost, MRI machine, diagnostics laboratory, walls to be stripped and decontaminated. It means, effectively, that Letterkenny General Hospital will be out of operation for a considerable time". He did not visit the hospital and was heavily criticised for not doing so. Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, himself a former Minister for Health who had announced the new emergency department almost exactly ten years previously, visited the hospital on 31 July. Martin said: "The sheer scale of the devastation following last week's floods has to be seen to be believed. This level of damage is unprecedented for any Irish hospital in living memory, and there are serious implications for health service provision right across the North West."