Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)

I am disappointed the Minister for Health is not available to respond to this matter. I am also that none of the Ministers of State at the Department of Health appear to be available either. Notwithstanding that, I am sure that the Minister who is here this evening to respond will do so to the best of his ability. I want to put on the record the fact that it is unacceptable to me that Ministers from the Department of Health are not here to address this important issue.

If any one of us here this evening thinks that the health service is working, I would challenge all of us to think again. The public health service is not working if it allows a man fighting for his life on a busy street to wait 30 minutes for an ambulance. That man was Peter Sherlock and he died in hospital soon after being taken there in the back of a van by a good Samaritan who was passing by at the time and saw the man in distress. He was taken to hospital in the back of a van because there was no ambulance available to take him. We are not referring here to a street in a small provincial town 50 miles from the nearest acute hospital. We are referring to a tragic incident which occurred on the streets of Drogheda, the largest town in Ireland, less than one mile from Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital and only a matter of a couple of hundred metres from an ambulance base.

We have been told over the past few days in a series of HSE statements that all vehicles stationed in Drogheda at the time the call was received, at 9.59 hours on the 26 May, were what was termed "tasked on calls" at the time. We are told that the closest available ambulance was dispatched to the scene. Why is it then that the closest available ambulance was located at Navan, 30 minutes from the town of Drogheda, the health care centre of the entire north-eastern region?

We are told that the three ambulances that were at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital were all actively engaged with patients. We are also informed, thanks only to the tenacity of the team on The Michael Reade Show on LMFM, that other ambulances were involved in patient transportation at the time the call was received.

In a statement last week the HSE state, "Ambulance Service resources are deployed on a clinical basis to ensure that the appropriate patient gets the appropriate response". I wonder if the Ministers present agree that the Peter Sherlock get the appropriate response because I do not.

This tragic saga has led to a real fear in terms of the ability of the ambulance service to respond to emergencies in Ireland's largest town. The House will agree it is imperative that the public must have confidence in the ambulance service and in the health service in general, and this tragic episode has challenged that confidence. The internationally accepted emergency response time is eight minutes, whereas it takes approximately 30 minutes for an ambulance to travel from Navan to Drogheda.

The circumstances around Mr. Sherlock's death have sent shock-waves around the wider community in Drogheda and the Louth-Meath area in general. One person too many has died waiting for an ambulance in Drogheda. I ask the Minister of State present representing the Minister for Health if he can state with confidence to the people of Drogheda that this will not happen again. Does he have confidence that the HSE ambulance service has the necessary resources at its disposal to do the job the public ask of it?

I implore the Minister to take definitive action to address the failures exposed in this case, to take a different course, dispense with the impenetrable HSE-speak and confront this as the human tragedy it was. I want the Government to be able to look me and the people of Drogheda and County Louth in the eye and tell us that this will not be allowed to happen again in Drogheda or, indeed, for that matter, anywhere else in this country.

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