Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This Government is determined to ensure people get medical treatment as swiftly, effectively and efficiently as possible. Since 2011 a major programme of change has been under way to reconfigure totally the way pre-hospital emergency care services are managed and delivered. In my three years as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the absolute resistance of the Deputies opposite to any change has been abundantly clear. They always talk about cuts, as if the measurement of inputs as opposed to outcomes was all that mattered. When this Government came into office in 2011, almost exactly three years ago, there were no targets set for the ambulance service. The Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, has raised the bar annually for response times and for 2014 a new target of 80% of life-threatening calls to be responded to in under 19 minutes has been set. We are measuring it now. We did not know what it was pre-2011.

The emergency services in Dublin are provided by Dublin Fire Brigade through an arrangement between Dublin City Council and the Health Service Executive. The National Ambulance Service is working to modernise and reconfigure its service to ensure emergency pre-hospital care is delivered in an appropriate and timely manner. In particular a single national control system is being developed. That will be in operation next year. Significant change is happening. The review was expected to be completed in early summer but the timescale has now been revised in order to allow the results of the National Ambulance Service capacity review to inform the recommendations. We are having, regardless of Government, changes to what is happening on the ground. We are changing and reconfiguring the delivery model for health services to make sure the outcomes for people, their life chances, are better, so that when the first responder arrives treatment can start on the spot. That is what is important to people.

The Deputy should not always measure inputs in every situation, whether health or education or anything else and say the more we spend the better. Let us start measuring the outputs of our systems to ensure they are reconfigured, refined and improved to have a better quality of outcome for our citizens.

See this speech in context