Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I pay tribute to the emergency workers, including ambulance crews and paramedics, who carry out vital work under very difficult circumstances without, in many cases, adequate resources and support. In 2008, there were 320 ambulances serving 4.5 million citizens in the State. Last year, the number had fallen to 265, dropping at night to a mere 113. The State has only half the paramedics per capitaof the North. Cuts by this Government and its predecessor have led directly to this situation.

I have warned a number of times of the risk to patient safety because of more cuts to the number of ambulance services available to cover the entirety of my constituency from Dundalk to Drogheda and all the places in between. In June 2011, a citizen died on the streets of Drogheda while waiting for an ambulance to arrive. In January 2012, it took 30 minutes for an ambulance to get to a fatal accident in Drogheda's town centre. At the beginning of this year, a young local man, Wayne McQuillan, died from stabs wounds. He had to be taken to hospital in a Garda car because of the slowness of the ambulance to arrive at the scene of the incident. The recent RTE "Prime Time" investigation revealed that despite life-threatening absences of available ambulances, rapid response vehicles costing taxpayers €100,000 each are parked for weeks outside the homes of senior management. Surely, this is unacceptable. Of all the crises under the Government, this one surely requires urgent action. I welcome the Fianna Fáil Private Members' motion and call on all Deputies to support it.

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