Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegates for their attendance. I will ask the same questions I asked the previous delegation and to which I did not get answers. It is worrying that Mr. Bell's statistics differ from the statistics provided in the last case. This information is key to the capacity review. The reason for this meeting today is to ensure that the service has the capacity to do the job which we, as ordinary people living in Ratoath or Ballyfermot, or where ever else, all expect it to do. I refer to the staff numbers compared to the numbers in Northern Ireland and in Scotland. Why have those services so many more staff? Do those services have different grading structures compared with the Irish service? The ambulance vehicles are exactly the same. The previous delegation did not have information on the total number of vehicles. If I add up the total provided by this delegation, I note there are 479 vehicles in Ireland compared with only 450 in Scotland. That does not add up, in my view. Is there a definitive spreadsheet available that will show Northern Ireland has ten of these things and we only have eight but that is all right because the population matches up? There has to be a spreadsheet somewhere, owned by someone who makes these decisions to resource the services. If we were to have that information, we could then understand that ten more are needed or that the current capacity is acceptable. I have a question about targets. All our targets are based on best international practice. We are at 68% to 70% with regard to Echo and Delta calls. How does this measure against how Northern Ireland and Scotland achieve their targets, notwithstanding the Ireland has 50% fewer vehicles than they have? Is that information available?