Eamonn Maloney (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will be very brief, for once. I welcome the delegates from both the ambulance service and the fire service. As has been said, it is a pressurised job. I am fortunate where I live to have a very good ambulance service - or as good as it can be because there are always criticisms of all these services - and likewise the fire service. As I live in a community where many of the services personnel live, I know the pressures under which they work. This is not widely acknowledged, even by politicians sometimes. I will not go over the ground covered by Deputy Healy in his contribution because I agree with him about the capacity review being the key. When the membership lobbied us about the Haddington Road agreement, I was very impressed by the necessity for a review which will study the national picture, taking into account that the situation in the cities is different from small towns or country villages. It is up to people like us to make this point that the capacity review is a requirement and, as has been the case in the UK, that such a review shows up everything.