Mr. Geoff McEvoy:

As I do not have those figures in front of me, I cannot drill down into them in any detail. A number of factors are causing the increase in the number of calls. Demographic change is one. One of the challenges, which we referred to in our submission and my colleague, Mr. Kenny, also referenced, is with respect to the designation of urgencies in ambulance calls. We have an echo call for cardiac cases and a delta call for the life-threatening but non-cardiac cases. Delta calls account for nearly half the call-outs for Dublin Fire Brigade but there is no capacity to drill down into them in any more detail or to subdivide them further. As such, that becomes a less useful metric. When members speak to the representatives of management they will probably be able to give a much more detailed breakdown of the figures to which the Deputy referred.