Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegations for their presentations. To whom or to what agency will the hospital groups be accountable when they are established? The Minister has stated he hopes planning permission for the national children’s hospital will have been secured by December 2014. How long will this delay the completion of the project? When will the GP-visit card for the under-fives card be rolled out?

The national screening service is expecting 140,000 women to attend for breast screens this year. The mobile clinic serving Drimnagh and Crumlin will be withdrawn at the end of this month for two years. The staff of this unit told me they have no funding. Crumlin, Drimnagh, Inchicore, Ballyfermot and south-west inner city Dublin are the most challenging health areas in Dublin city and they are serviced by this unit. Women in these areas have been told to attend clinics in Tallaght and Clondalkin, which will be a significant inconvenience to them. We should be targeting those areas where people will not normally want to attend these clinics. Will this be reviewed?

On Monday last, my brother was taken seriously ill at my local primary care centre and he needed to be brought to hospital by ambulance.

When he arrived there, he was in a distressed state but the staff were wonderful with him. I was told about five minutes later that it would be an hour before the ambulance could take him to the local hospital, which is St. James's Hospital. I was asked by the doctor who was his GP at the time whether I would mind taking him in the car to St. James's Hospital, which I did. This took on average a couple of minutes but they were very important minutes because he was very stressed, in a lot of pain with his chest and had a number of other issues that needed to be dealt with. From the time I entered the accident and emergency department, he was dealt with straightaway and taken into resuscitation and, thank God, he is still in hospital and doing well.

The reason I am raising it is because of the delay of an hour. The doctor has suspicions that he could have had a heart attack or really bad respiratory problems. Waiting in the accident and emergency department, I witnessed three ambulances that were stationary out in the area. I happen to know somebody in the medical team who arrived in one of them who said it was a constant reminder that each time they entered the accident and emergency department in St. James's Hospital, they could be anything from 30 to 40 minutes waiting to receive a trolley back. I am raising this because on that day, I can only say that the work I saw doctors, nurses and aides do was unreal. I have never seen anything like it. There were 72 patients in cubicles, ten on trolleys in the corridor and another 62 waiting in the accident and emergency department. Over 100 people were in that accident and emergency department. Is there any other way? We are talking about a turnaround time of 20 minutes. I heard what Ms McGuinness said. A number of other people have raised issues. Only that I witnessed it, I would not have believed that anybody with chest pains would be asked to wait an hour for an ambulance to come. I was lucky that we lived so close to the hospital. The doctor said that but for the fact that we lived so close to the hospital, she would not have allowed him to be taken from the primary care centre. What delays ambulances departing from the bays is the fact that they are unable to retrieve their trolleys. That is a fact, not a myth or a story. I witnessed it myself. Perhaps somebody might be able to address that.