Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending the Chamber for this important matter. I am raising a matter arising from the recent death of a baby in Tralee. I express my sympathy to the family on their profound loss.

The HSE has confirmed that a 999 call was received in the early hours of 18 June from the family of a three-and-a-half-week-old child who was having breathing difficulties and subsequently suffered a suspected cot death in Tralee. However, the ambulance was sent to The Tennis Village, Model Farm Road, Cork, rather than The Tennis Village, Tralee. The first emergency vehicle arrived at the scene in Tralee 30 minutes after the initial call, which the Minister will agree is not an acceptable timeframe in such instances. This timeframe would have been much smaller had the call been co-ordinated from a local ambulance centre, as was the case before May.

Reports on this case have seriously dented public confidence in the new centralised ambulance system. Yesterday, Kerry media carried a report about how on 9 June it had take 75 minutes for an ambulance to take an elderly man having breathing difficulties to hospital after his daughter had called for it. Again, the ambulance was sent to the wrong address initially. It was meant to go to an address in Ballyvelly but was sent to Spa Road instead. My colleague Deputy Jerry Buttimer has raised similar incidents in Cork at the health committee.

The director of the National Ambulance Service, Mr. Robert Morton, has suggested that a postcode system would assist in despatching ambulances. If he believes this is important, why then was the national centralised system rolled out before a postcode system was established? This needs to be urgently reviewed because it is a matter of life and death and we cannot afford for it not to work.

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