Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Nash for raising the issue. A significant reform programme has been under way in recent years to totally reconfigure the way the HSE manages and delivers pre-hospital care services to ensure a clinically driven, nationally co-ordinated system, supported by improved technology. The national ambulance service, NAS, is not a static service and it deploys its emergency resources in a dynamic manner and works on an area and national, rather than a local, basis. The NAS has been addressing response times through a number of measures, including the performance improvement action plan, the development of the intermediate care service, the trial emergency aeromedical service, and the national ambulance service control centre reconfiguration project.

The national control centre will consist of one national control system on two sites - Tallaght and Ballyshannon - and it is intended to improve dispatch and response times, with regional, rather than local, deployment and better use of first responder schemes. The NAS control and dispatch system is currently operating within eight ambulance service regions with no interconnectivity of radio systems, thus restricting the service response flexibility. The service control centre reconfiguration project and associated ICT enabling projects aim to reduce the number of ambulance control centres from eight to one, operating over two sites - Tallaght and Ballyshannon - and transition communications from analogue to digital, including voice and data. The total value of this project, which commenced in late 2010, is €23 million.

The national ambulance service control centre reconfiguration project represents one of the most critical and complex pieces of the State's emergency infrastructure ever undertaken. The HSE's intention to reconfigure the existing ambulance control centres is consistent with international best practice and endorsed by the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, as the most appropriate approach to improve the quality of services to patients and facilitate investment in technologically enabled service delivery.

This project is also a key element of Future Health: A Strategic Framework for Health Reform in Ireland 2012-2015.

Based on current known variables, the expected timescale for full commissioning, including the migration of all NAS ambulance control centres, is the end of 2014. Both the NAS and HIQA have a number of concerns about the control and dispatch structures at some existing control centres. In this context, the NAS intends to migrate a number of these centres to our existing facility in Townsend Street with a view to mitigating these concerns ahead of the completion of the national centre. The NAS is satisfied that Townsend Street is suitable and infrastructurally sound to facilitate the interim migration of Cork, Tralee and Navan control centres and it is providing additional staff, training, technology and equipment to facilitate this process. The migration of these control centres in the short-term will also improve the optimum and dynamic utilisation of all available resources in those areas, and peripheral areas, such as rapid response vehicles, intermediate care vehicles and emergency ambulances.

There can be no question of any compromise of patient safety and safety generally in the system in respect of any decision that is taken. That is paramount in respect of all considerations.

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