Derek Keating (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for giving me the opportunity to raise this issue and I also thank the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, for her attention.

The Dublin Fire Brigade ambulance service is one of the oldest in the world. In 1899, the service dealt with approximately 520 calls but today it deals with approximately 80,000 incidents annually. The Dublin Fire Brigade ambulance service has an added advantage when attending emergency incidents. Where necessary, a fire tender or other specialist vehicle may also be deployed to an incident. Each fire tender has fully trained paramedics who are often the first on `the scene in the case of ECHO or DELTA calls and act as first responders. In many instances, the fire crews initiate first interventions which aid in reducing time to defibrillation and resuscitation as well as reducing on-scene time and ensuring good patient handling and removal. Fire crews are particularly good at patient handling. They take a full-team approach at road traffic collisions and are vital in the stabilisation, immobilisation and management of spinal injury patients and their removal to hospital.

Dublin Fire Brigade has a duty under section 25 of the Fire Services Act to take charge of major or complex incidents. Its ambulance crews can be deployed in high-risk situations involving chemical, fire or other serious incidents where it may not be possible to deploy other services such as the HSE ambulance service. In the event of an emergency incident at Dublin Airport or at Dublin Port, for example, the local authority is responsible under the emergency framework for providing fire and rescue services. The best resource available to provide this incident cover is the Dublin Fire Brigade integrated fire and ambulance service. Its integrated control room has a pivotal role to play in providing the cover needed for such events. An added bonus of the combined fire and emergency medical service is the extra equipment available to crews to ensure scene safety and to extract entrapped patients.

If Dublin Fire Brigade becomes just a fire and non-medical emergency service, vital life-saving services will be lost. If it loses its ability to dispatch integrated emergency medical services, lives will be put at risk. Fire services in the United Kingdom are moving towards an integrated service, combining or co-locating fire and emergency medical services.

Dublin Fire Brigade is contracted to supply 11 ambulances to the Dublin area and handles approximately 80,000 incidents per annum. The National Ambulance Service is supposed to be the first responder in the Tallaght and Swords areas but it usually does not have an ambulance available for these areas. The National Ambulance Service regularly does not have an ambulance on duty in certain areas because if crew members are unavailable for any reason, they are not replaced, as was highlighted on "Prime Time" recently.

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