Ms Laverne McGuinness:

Deputies Healy and Nash and many other members raised the issue of resourcing of the ambulance service and questioned whether there are enough resources. As I set out in my opening statement, the budget for the ambulance service for 2014 is €137.7 million, which is a significant increase. There was significant investment in 2013, which is the first year that level of investment was made. More than €26 million was provided for the new national single control centre and the 25 new intermediate care vehicles. They only started arriving in June so we really only got the benefit of them towards the end of the year. In fact, we got 36 vehicles last year but funding for 25 arrived as part of the service plan. Preliminary data shows that they are having quite a significant impact, and we will be able to publish that data in due course. Inter-hospital transfers, which do not require emergency ambulance services, are able to take those patients who still need to be transported on stretchers by a vehicle. That means that the ambulances are freed up, thereby enabling us to respond more efficiently and more quickly to other incidents. We got another €3.6 million this year for the control room.

In response to Deputy Nash, I mentioned the capacity review in the opening statement. It said that as part of our national strategy we will carrying out a capacity review. There may be a different interpretation as to what the capacity review is. The capacity review is quite technical in terms of what is required. A lot of expertise is required in terms of benchmarking internationally. We are already progressing in that direction. Perhaps Mr. Dunne might elaborate on what that involves, rather than a wide stakeholder consultation in that regard?