Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegates for their reports today. Most of my questions have been asked. I just want to focus on one or two issues. We constantly hear on the ground about the lack of trained personnel and resources. We are sometimes told ambulances are actually parked up because they do not have personnel to operate them. Two weeks ago, I heard two reports about ambulances that had been parked up. In the first case, an ambulance had to travel a greater distance than usual, taking over an hour to get to its destination. In the second case, and ambulance had to go from Kilkenny to Youghal, which is quite a long distance. It took over an hour and a half to get its destination. When it got there, drugs had to be administered but there were no personnel on board to do so. Consequently, another ambulance had to come from Dungarvan. There are many question marks associated with the availability of trained personnel and resources. These are just two cases that happen to have been brought to my attention two weeks ago. Both occurred in the same week.

The other point I wanted to focus on was our meeting here on 2 December. That report categorically stated that some senior and other staff did not have the required skills or technical knowledge to do the job. That was on 2 December and Ms McGuinness states here that she met with her senior team on 5 December, when the team members took the opportunity to confirm that they had the requisite skills to carry out their roles effectively. How many people were actually at that meeting and how many people said that? Three days earlier, the opposite is quite clearly stated. Did Ms McGuinness meet five or ten people? Are there still people out there who are not trained? How is the HSE going to overcome that?

On the capacity review, it states here that the level of investment required is in the order of an additional 290 full-time staff as well as additional vehicles, emergency ambulances, intermediate care vehicles and rapid response vehicles. Is that actually likely to happen? Does the HSE have the funding for this?

Finally, will the national ambulance service come in under budget this year?