Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I join my colleagues in commending our health spokesperson, Deputy Kelleher, for tabling this motion and allowing two evenings of debate on what is a critical issue of exceptional importance and concern throughout the country. I am sure the Minister of State will acknowledge this, particularly as a result of the very effective investigative work done by "Prime Time", which highlighted real deficiencies and the stretched resources our ambulance service must deal with on a daily and nightly basis in various parts of the country.

I commend the Trojan work done by the highly trained staff in the ambulance service throughout the country. I am sure the Minister of State will join me in commending them for the work they do. It is not something everybody has the ability or strength to do because it is a very difficult job and requires an ability to deal with very stressful situations. Those who work in it must have a vocational spirit to be able to take on the role and carry it out as they do day in and night out. Unfortunately, we have not supported them sufficiently, or in the way we should, to enable them to carry out the role. They try to do it as best they can with the resources allocated to them but they are human and can only manage a certain amount of work. They cannot be in two places at the same time.

The Minister of State is aware that my county of Donegal has had very unfortunate situations where target ambulance response times have not been met. I will reference one very unfortunate case which has been dealt with in the House before.

The family of Maura Porter, who unfortunately lost her life on 30 December 2013 as a result of a road traffic accident in Carndonagh, County Donegal, has been very strong in putting across their experience and in trying to ensure no other family has to experience a similar situation again. It took up to 50 minutes for an ambulance to attend the scene of the accident, in which Maura was a pedestrian, even though there is an ambulance station approximately half a mile from there. Unfortunately, Maura passed away some time after she reached the hospital. Members of her family who live right beside the scene of the accident spent an excruciating 40 or 50 minutes at her side as they waited for the ambulance to come. They will never know whether it might have made a difference and she might have survived if she had been treated earlier, but they want to ensure - at a minimum - that no other family has to experience this type of situation in the future.

Unfortunately, people in Donegal and other parts of the country have been unable to get the necessary reassurance that the relevant and required resources are in place to ensure calls can be responded to in the shortest time possible; indeed, within the target times that have been set. Deputies have mentioned other cases from across the country which support the contention that the fact that ambulance response times are not being met is evidence that our resources are over-stretched. In June of last year, 45% of Echo calls and 49% of Delta calls in the west were responded to within the target time. The figures in the north west were 75% and 62%, respectively.

I know there have been some changes within the ambulance service. It has been moving from an on-call service at night time to a rostered service. I think that is a constructive move in that one can now be sure that those staff are actually on duty, as opposed to being at their homes, when a call might come in. That should lead to faster response times. Unfortunately, that can only be the case if they are actually at base when the call comes in. It will depend on whether someone has the misfortune to take ill after an ambulance has been called away on a call and has not been replaced, and there is no replacement ambulance within a reasonable distance of that area.

In the Carndonagh example that I mentioned, there is a station beside the location of the unfortunate accident. There used to be two ambulances on call during the day and one ambulance on call at night. As a result of the move away from on-call to rostering, that has moved to a situation where there is one ambulance rostered all day and one rostered at night. In order to try to keep two ambulances per day in the station, there is supposed to be an ambulance sent from Letterkenny every morning to back that up. Unfortunately, that is not happening in reality. If the ambulance is on call at night, no ambulance is sent in to take up its position. This means that if a second call comes in, one has to depend on being lucky enough to have an ambulance in place. Otherwise, an ambulance might have to make a one-way trip of 40 or 50 minutes to reach an emergency case.

Many Government Deputies have spoken about successful outcomes. Is the success of an outcome dictated by the treatment that is provided to the patient when the ambulance actually arrives? Is the success or otherwise of the call-out dictated by how the patient responds or by how quickly the ambulance arrives? When people speak about successful outcomes, I wonder whether they are somehow trying to diminish the importance of getting there on time. There is no doubt that when the ambulance gets there, the treatment that is made available to the patient is crucial. We have ambulance staff who are exceptionally well trained to do the best they can when they arrive on-site. There is no doubt that the time involved in getting there - the speed with which the ambulance gets there - is crucial to outcomes. The sooner the ambulance personnel can get there to provide expert treatment and bring the patient to hospital, the higher the chance of a successful outcome and the higher the chance of the patient making a full recovery, particularly in cases of cardiac arrest and stroke.

We need to see what the type of investment that Deputy Kelleher has outlined in his motion. This investment is necessary to increase the number of personnel, facilities and ambulances to the level necessary to enable ambulance staff to meet the targets that have been set. It is also needed so that people throughout the country can be confident that the service which is in place will be available to them if they ever need to use it.

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