David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Would it not be in the public interest to publish it, given that it made recommendations? I have received a copy of the report myself but it has not been published so I do not want to go into the details of what was in it. We should be seeking for that report to be published in the first instance because it raised a number of fundamental questions. We cannot be doing reports and then not publishing them. We cannot do our job as a committee if we do not have access to all of the reports.

I also received a copy of the workforce plan, or at least an executive summary of it. That was sent to me as well but I am not sure if that has been published. I just want to read a paragraph from it, which is troubling for me. The witnesses mentioned some of it as well. It sets out the capacity demand and the increase in capacity that needs to be put into the system over the next number of years. It says we need 3,018 whole-time equivalents and a total increase of 2,160 whole-time equivalents but then there were also 858 retirements and turnovers. It refers to the 1,080 that were mentioned and additional numbers in the national service plan. They are quite big figures. It is a massive increase in capacity that is needed. I am not sure if there is a plan there to reach it by the dates that have been set.

I just want to read something from the conclusion of that document. It says that the National Ambulance Service emergency capacity review 2022 assessed the level of 19-minute performance that could be achieved if activity were to increase at the projected rate to 2027 and response cycle times were to stay at current levels. It concluded that if it continued with current response times, the National Ambulance Service would have insufficient resources to respond to the projected demand and as a result the 19-minute performance would be considerably less than 40%. That is quite a stark statement.

I will give out some of the response times I got in response to my parliamentary questions just to add some further context. These are for Echo and Delta incidents, which are both life-threatening. These figures are broken down by month and by year. In 2019, for the east region the average response time for Delta and Echo calls was 15 minutes. In 2022, it was 22 minutes. In the midlands, the average response time in 2019 was 19 minutes and that went to 29 minutes in 2022. In the mid-west, it was 16 minutes in 2019 and 25 minutes in 2022. The worst region of all was the south east. The response time was 21 minutes in 2019, which is bad enough, and it is now 33 minutes. In the southern region it was 18 minutes and is now 31 minutes. There are quite stark and big increases in response times. Would Mr. Morton not agree?