Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 October 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

National Ambulance Service: Discussion

2:00 am

Mr. Pat Healy:

To reassure the Deputy, committee and public, we are absolutely satisfied that the current helicopter emergency service model - I will ask Professor O'Donnell to comment on that in a minute - works well. There are always improvements that can be achieved. The advocacy group engaged with HSE. We had a meeting with them with the CEO. We agreed that we would look at the crewing model. There is a view that maybe physicians should be involved. We are open to looking at that. The CEO asked me and our chief clinical officer, Dr. Colm Henry, to oversee a process, chaired by Mr. Keith Synnott and involving the team here and others, to look at how that can be developed, principally around trauma patients, which is what the advocacy group was most concerned about. We will look at that in the first phase. To be proactive, Mr. Morton, Professor O'Donnell and others have visited Scotland. They have got that broader aspect. As well as dealing with that specific issue, we have to look at the wider critical care and aeromedical services. We can learn from what has been done in Scotland that can be translated here to join that up in a more significant way. We are intending to deal with that. The Synnott review will be concluded in the first quarter of 2026. I hope that will inform our plans.

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