Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I am responding on behalf of the Minister for Health. I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue and for the opportunity to discuss the recent policy developments associated with it. Community response in various forms has long been an important support in the delivery of health care in Ireland and, in particular, in pre-hospital care for people who have been unfortunate enough to suffer serious illness or injury. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the enormous voluntary contribution, commitment and assistance offered by various schemes in responding to emergency calls over the years.

There are two types of priority emergency call-out in Ireland for the national ambulance service. ECHO calls are for situations involving life-threatening cardiac or respiratory arrest and DELTA calls involve life-threatening situations other than cardiac or respiratory arrest. The national standard for addressing ECHO and DELTA calls is the EMS priority dispatch standard, which is issued by the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council, PHECC. Under this standard, ECHO calls may be responded to by cardiac first responders, but DELTA calls require a minimum response of a trained emergency first responder. The new policy was approved on 27 March 2012. It will ensure that the integration of cardiac first responder schemes into priority 999 call responses has a robust governance framework in place. As a consequence, however, neither HIQA nor PHECC standards support the dispatch of community first responders to DELTA calls any longer. There is, therefore, a significant clinical and governance risk in using community first responders for DELTA calls and this practice will have to stop.

I would like to emphasise that the use of community first responder schemes is still important and will remain so. These volunteers are found in workplaces, sports clubs, at public events and within local communities, as the Deputy said. They are often first on the scene at an incident and they are in an ideal position to use their training to provide care and treatment until further assistance arrives. However, the use of community first responders as a dispatched first response to 999 calls was developed before the introduction of national clinical standards for emergency responses and cannot be sustained, other than for ECHO cardiac and respiratory call-outs. Should a community group wish to be able to respond to DELTA priority emergency call-outs, then the responders would need to be certified at emergency first responder level. Standard national training courses are available from approved bodies and the national ambulance service, through local liaison managers, would welcome approaches from groups and individuals who wish to contribute in this way to the provision of emergency services in their communities.

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