Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ours is, to a certain extent, a disjointed conversation, Minister. There is no doubt that resource efficiencies are needed. I support efficiencies in any manner they can be procured as long as they do not have a negative effect on patients. I have requested from the Minister for Health, HIQA, the Health Information and Quality Authority, and the National Ambulance Service on previous occasions and again from the Minister today, key performance indicators to show the ambulance service's response time for life and death emergency situations in the north east. I ask again that the Minister provide those to the House as soon as possible.

It is important to note that I provide the Minister for Health with key performance indicators of patients and citizens who have come to me and shown me that the performance of the service falls outside the HIQA guidelines. The Minister mentioned there is a rapid response unit in Trim. HIQA guidelines say that treatment should be available to echo or delta patients in eight minutes but there needs to be an ambulance to transport the patients to a hospital in the 18-minute target. The ambulance service is not achieving those performance indicators in the north east.

The views of the National Ambulance Service and its staff are at polar opposites - one could not find two more divergent analyses of the situation in the region. We can talk about who said this and who said that, but the only way to cut through the issue and to enable the Minister to manage the funding of the region better is for local key performance indictors to be provided. Will the Minister provide such indictors?

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