Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We are trying to improve our accident and emergency units yet there is a difficulty in getting the people who most need to arrive there in a timely fashion to these units and a difficulty in how it is organised. The recent "Prime Time" report highlighted in a more global way what many of us saw locally and was very useful from that perspective.

I would also like to commend the front-line workers but shifts are not being covered and ambulances are just not there. In Maynooth, for example, there is no ambulance on a Thursday so do not get sick in Maynooth or the surrounding area on Thursdays between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. The ambulance is substituted by a paramedic on a motorbike, which might be all right in some circumstances but certainly not if one needs to be rushed to hospital having had a heart attack or been involved in a road traffic accident.

The minimum response times are set for a good purpose. They are set because there is a need in very specific circumstances, like in the case of a heart attack, to get people to a hospital within a certain period of time or their chances of survival will reduce. Last year in my constituency, a man and his young son were in view of Naas General Hospital but there was no ambulance available to be deployed. Gardaí succeeded in resuscitating the man at the side of the road but he did not survive. He may not have survived even if he had been taken to the hospital by ambulance but in reality he was not given the kind of chance that he deserved. Not only was he an unfortunate victim in this situation, but his young son was with him at the time and the trauma of seeing this incident will stay with him forever. There is clearly an issue and we are all seeing it. How the service is managed and run and the resources that go into it really need to be got right and I have concerns that it is not at the moment.

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