Mr. William Merriman:

There are a number of areas throughout the country that cause significant issues in terms of reaching our key performance indicators, KPIs, mainly due to geographical location. These mainly centre on the west side of the country. There are areas on the south-east coast and so on that we are currently considering as well. An example is the likes of Recess, in Connemara, to which the Senator referred. We have put in additional staffing within that area. The replacement of the existing health centre there is ongoing and we hope to be in that facility by the third quarter of 2023. Areas such as that have low demand and, in reality, there is a question in respect of the need for an ambulance to be there on a continuous basis.

I refer to the need to keep people's skills up and everything else. It does not reach that threshold. We will always have areas in respect of which we will find it challenging to meet the KPIs. In the context of the likes of deployment points, we are doing a significant piece of work in conjunction with our partners in HSE estates. Where new primary care centres and so on are being developed, we seek to put in a deployment point within that from which we can deploy a resource at times of day that our computer-aided dispatch, CAD, system predicts there may be activity within that area. That will allow us to deploy ambulances, albeit only for two or three hours a day, possibly, but it will assist us to get to the area more quickly than if the ambulance had to come from Galway city or County Mayo or somewhere like that. There are areas similar to that throughout the country and they are an ongoing development that we hope to improve throughout 2023.