Ms Mary Dunnion:

If we take Deputy Regina Doherty's first point - her concern on the lack of clinical audit - that would be well-founded. There is clinical audit in the Dublin Fire Brigade but it requires much more development. The reason the clinical audit is in the Dublin Fire Brigade is that it has had a medical director on a part-time basis for a longer time than the National Ambulance Service. The latter's medical director was appointed only in 2011. Notwithstanding that, there are significant opportunities for a clinical audit to already take place and those opportunities need now to be taken.

There was a reluctance on the behalf of the National Ambulance Service to conduct a clinical audit because it was waiting for an electronic record and was not using the paper record. We would have seen that as a deficit and that the paper record should be used for clinical audit because many places do not have electronic records and are using paper records.