Manus Boyle (Fine Gael)
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I am glad to hear that because securing a helicopter service to look after Donegal is one of the things that I have been trying to work on, along with party members who are also on the cross-Border committee on Northern Ireland. It is really crucial. We are totally left on our own.

I will give one example from last Wednesday, which really maddened me. While the times might not be exactly right, our ambulance left Killybegs at 12 midnight and headed to Letterkenny, where it went to the Garda station in Letterkenny. That station is located exactly three quarters of a kilometre from the Letterkenny accident and emergency department. Who in their right mind sends for an ambulance from there?

Then it returned and was back at the base at 5 a.m. that night and got another call for Letterkenny. When it was over at Meenirroy it was told to stand down. Who was covering my area when that ambulance was away? There was absolutely nobody there. We are left on our own. It is not right and I do not care what people say. We are over there and we need our ambulance service. Maybe I am being too hot-headed about it here but I have people coming to me day after day about this. This has been going on this last four years. I met Mr. Morton's predecessor and he promised me the sun, the moon and the stars when I met him at the Tallaght office. He had a lovely place up there. He had a big board and he told me, "Look at this Mr. Boyle, we have a call in Cork and we can reroute this ambulance back." He did do it and it was great but when we are left in Donegal we have nobody to reroute. We are on our own. The National Ambulance Service needs put in a plan for rural Ireland.

I have a heap of questions here but I do have not time to ask them all. With regard to emergency calls in rural areas like Mayo, Sligo or other counties, how does Donegal tally against that?