James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is important to make it clear, in the short time I have, that nobody who works in the ambulance service believes it cannot be improved - it can be and it will be. The real issue here, which Deputy Ó Cuív alluded to, is the time to care. That is why the early responder and pre-hospital emergency care advance paramedics are so important. That feeds into the Deputy's other concern regarding the Order of Malta and others, who are not trained to deal with people in the same way as the advanced paramedics are trained, which is why they cannot be used in as open a fashion as the Deputy might like. That is not in any way to denigrate the people concerned and we certainly need to look into the issue raised by the Deputy to determine how we can best use the resources available. There must be cases which would be suitable for the Order of Malta to transport - patients who are not acutely ill but who, nonetheless, need to go to hospital. However, I do not think we would want them to be looking after someone who has had an acute heart attack, without the ability to canulate the patient and so forth, or other situations which require the specialist expertise of the advanced paramedic.

In 2013, the HSE target for carrying vehicles to respond within 19 minutes was 70% for echo calls and 68% for delta calls, both of which are life-threatening. For 2014, the target for both call types has been increased to 80%.

There has been in excess of a 1,000% per month increase in ambulance call-outs and this has placed a strain on the service. None the less, they are only 1% and 2% behind those rates this year. The Government has increased spending on the ambulance service both this year and last year. While there was a reduction in the number of ambulance vehicles per sefor carrying patients, there are more of them available to do that job now because we have increased the number of vehicles to transfer patients between hospitals, thus freeing up those as well as the number of cars and motorbikes.

We are making improvements, although I can understand that there is room for more. We plan to make more improvements as time goes by. We want people to be reassured that they are able to obtain acute care when they need it. We fully realise and understand also that there are isolated areas with poor roads that are very difficult to access. We will continue to strive to achieve that, however. Mr. Dunne was alluding to the fact that our vehicles are of the highest specification and that our staff are trained to the highest level. Those matters are important. The crucial thing is that ambulances can get to the patient who needs them on time.

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