Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

This is ludicrous. The Army has to be asked. It acts in response to a request. During the crisis, the HSE was not slow in asking the Army for help. It asked the Army for help from the first day of the frost to carry out air ambulance missions over and above what it had ordinarily been doing. The HSE approached the Army to transport palliative care nurses in south Galway. The HSE approached the Army with a request to do various things in the midlands, and the Army obliged. However, the local authorities, which neither my party nor the Deputy's party controls, were very slow in asking for any assistance. They did not appear to appreciate that the crisis was a local crisis to be dealt with at local level.

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