Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

There is a major crisis in the national ambulance service - a crisis that leads to deaths. The estimate is that one person per month dies unnecessarily as a result of the under-resourcing and the cuts that have been imposed on the ambulance service. It does not get any more serious than that. People are dying unnecessarily. The cuts the Government is imposing - not just the recruitment embargo that impacts on these services but the more general cuts across the health services - are exacerbating this situation. When the Minister downgraded the accident and emergency services at St. Columcille's Hospital in Loughlinstown, we predicted that it would cause a crisis in St. Vincent's Hospital and this has now been confirmed by the consultants in St. Vincent's. This leads directly to further problems in terms of emergency vehicle response times because as the firefighters and ambulance drivers are reporting, ambulances are then queuing up for hours outside emergency departments because those departments are overwhelmed and under-resourced and there are not enough beds in the hospitals. All of these things are combining to cause a life-threatening crisis which the Minister intends to make worse by attacking one part of the emergency services that is working, namely, Dublin Fire Brigade which provides ambulance services in Dublin. Dublin Fire Brigade provides 40% of the emergency responses and must survive on only 9% of the budget. The Minister wants essentially to pillage that service in order to compensate for the crisis in the national ambulance service. It is outrageous.

It is very simple. The resourcing levels in our fire and ambulance services must be brought up to international standards, there must be no more cuts and the Minister must lift the recruitment embargo so that we have the vehicles and resources to provide the services that save lives.

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