Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Chairman will be lenient. I thank Ms Laverne for the presentation. I compliment the ambulance service for the service it provides throughout the country.

Over the past two weeks I have made the time and effort to meet members of the ambulance service who are working on the front line. A few of the issues raised concern me. One is the number of people employed as supervisors. There are days when a number of supervisors are on call and others when no supervisor is on call in some centres.

A second issue is that in every area there are advanced paramedics who have gone through the training process. Some days quite a number of them are on call, whereas on other days no advanced paramedic is on call.

A third issue relates to Cork, Kerry and Limerick. I understand 15 people are working in call centres who have not been redeployed.

Could I get clarification on the total number working in call centres throughout the country who have not yet been redeployed and when is it intended to deal with this matter?

The next issue I wish to raise is in regard to skills and has been found in that respect in the HIQA report. I would like to get clarification from the human resources department with regard to people working in the area of human resources. It would be good to clarify all the training and skills people working in that area have because a skill in this area is a particular skill in itself. This was one of the issues identified in the HIQA report. We have not got full clarification as to where this skills deficiency is arising. It is an issue that has been raised with me.

The next issue I wish to raise is in regard to meeting with senior management. The report indicates there was a meeting on 5 December 2014. Could we get clarification on the senior management involved? Are we talking about grades 7 and 8 or grade 6? One of the complaints I received is that there is a lack of and serious deficiency in communication at national level down to people working at grade 6. One of the matters highlighted to me is that all the issues identified in the HIQA report were ones that had been raised at meetings within the ambulance service during the past two or three years. I am open to correction on this but I understand there is a move whereby the centre will be located in Tallaght. Will the Dublin fire brigade ambulance service also operate from that centre or will it operate from a separate centre? That may have been clarified already but I would like clarification on it.

A major issue that has been raised with me is how staff rotas are devised and who is on call. As one person put it to me, it is like running a Garda station where all the gardaí are on duty but no sergeant, superintendent or inspector is on call. That worries me. This issue has been raised by people who are working in the ambulance service. It is a concern that has been raised by people I met who have first-hand knowledge of it and not by those with second-hand or third-hand knowledge of it.

I wish to raise the matter of the training programme. Major cutbacks have occurred in all the health services during the past number of years. One of the issues raised with me related to training. It is one of the areas that seems to have suffered. Is it proposed to ring-fence a certain budget for training and upskilling people who require such back-up support? Has that been examined for 2015? What numbers are involved? I understand there are 1,600 people in the ambulance service and of them 300 have been upskilled to the scale of an advanced paramedic but that up to 60% of those in the service should be upskilled up to the scale. What programme is in place for doing that and what is the timescale for trying to achieve that target?