James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I do not believe that anybody is making that assumption. It is a difficult thing to do. Anything that involves deploying a medical team does not have a simple solution. This must be raised, however, and I will give a recent example. A person in east Cork recently had to wait 90 minutes for an ambulance to come from Carlow. I will not give any further breakdown, but that person is now dead. I will leave it to the experts to make their assumptions but it is my understanding that perhaps the person could have been helped if they had got to the hospital on time. This is extremely worrying. It is just not good enough. It is wholly unacceptable that ambulances are being pulled from the middle of Leinster down to Munster in east Cork, and particularly when we have hospital only 45 minutes up the road. There are most certainly ambulances waiting there to be discharged. There is an enormous urgency around this issue. I would hope that in one years' time when the witnesses are before the committee again that improvements would be made by then. I accept that Covid was exceptionally difficult for everybody but I remind the witnesses that this issue was there before Covid.

All of us here acknowledge the extraordinary work done by the people in the National Ambulance Service. We are very grateful to them. They are under enormous pressure. It is just not good enough from the HSE quite frankly.