Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be as concise as I can. I think the national ambulance service is doing a phenomenal job considering it has one hand tied behind its back when it comes to resources. There are three times as many ambulances in Northern Ireland as in the Republic, and we are trying to compete on a level playing field, which is impossible. In her initial contribution, Ms McGuinness said response times are improving and this is correct, but the latest available figures for the west show that 45% of life-threatening incidents are responded to within a 19-minute period. Those figures are 12 months old. For the last six months I have been looking for current figures and the only thing I have got in that time is a link to the HSE website. It would be nice if we could have the current figures.

We have three ambulance black spots in the west of Ireland. They were identified by the Western Health Board back in 2001 and at long last today we have a commitment to operate on a 24/7 basis. In the HSE service plan there is €700,000 set aside to operate these three stations. The Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, told us in the Dáil that it would take €1.8 million to provide a 24/7 operation in the three stations. Is the money being made available now to provide that without the removal of resources from the surrounding stations? Why has it taken so long to resource this? We have had the Western Health Board report and an independent review in 2005 of the ambulance services in the west and nothing was done about it. There was a whistleblower's report given to the HSE last year and to the Minister this year listing 216 incidents and near misses in a six-month period in County Roscommon, and yet we have to wait until HIQA publishes a report before anything can happen.

My final question concerns the capacity review. It seems the HSE is throwing in the towel as far as rural Ireland is concerned. The witnesses are comparing the situation here with that in England, which in my view is a whitewash. Looking at Scotland, 74.7% of responses there were within the eight-minute target in 2012-13 and we are saying we cannot achieve that here. In Northern Ireland their target for responses within eight minutes is 72.5% and not less than 65% in any area. Ms McGuinness is saying that at best, with the resources put in, we can only do it 64% of the time. It might be worthwhile looking to see what they are doing in Northern Ireland and in Scotland rather than England.

These delays are lives lost and that is the reality of it. It is also important to point out that the HSE is still not publishing its figures for first responses within eight minutes. We do not even know what is happening on the ground at the moment as we do not have those figures. When are we actually going to start seeing some real response times regarding first responders landing at the scene of the incident and carrying out the type of work we know our ambulance service can do?