Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this important and sensitive matter. I also thank him for telling me of the difficulty that a particular constituent of his experienced. It is important that such issues be brought to the floor of the House, as we are referring to real people when we talk about statistics, numbers, resources and decisions. I will ask the HSE and the National Ambulance Service, NAS, about the matter that the Deputy has brought to my attention.

Within Roscommon, the NAS operates from a number of bases. As the House will be aware, though, the NAS dynamically deploys resources to respond to incidents as they arise. This is achieved in the Roscommon area by dispatching resources from adjacent ambulance stations in neighbouring counties. Resources from ambulance stations including Carrick-on-Shannon, Tuam, Longford and Athlone can, and are, deployed to incidents in Roscommon as required in addition to the resources of ambulance bases in Roscommon.

As the Deputy outlined, in order to develop services in Roscommon further, the NAS acquired the former Garda station at Loughglynn, refurbished it and opened it as a dispatch point in 2016. However, I take the Deputy's point. The ambulance service in west Roscommon has been reviewed a number of times in terms of available resources and demand for services. Since 2011, extra staff have been assigned to Roscommon to provide an additional 24-7 emergency ambulance and a 24-7 rapid response vehicle. In addition, an intermediate care vehicle has been deployed to Roscommon to undertake inter-hospital and inter-facility transfers.

As the Deputy alluded, Roscommon is well served by the Emergency Aeromedical Service, EAS, which operates from Custume barracks, Athlone. I am eager to see whether we can do more in the aeromedical space, since that would enable the EAS in Athlone to do even more in the Deputy's part of the country. That service was established to provide a more timely response to persons in rural areas and is available seven days per week in daylight hours. The service is specifically targeted at the west of Ireland, with the highest demand for services coming from counties Galway, Mayo and Roscommon.

The capacity review, which was the first review of the ambulance service that I published when I became Minister, examined overall ambulance resource levels and distribution against demand and activity. Future investment in ambulance services will be guided by that capacity review.

In recent years, year-on-year additional investment has been directed towards the NAS, but I accept that we have more to do. This year, an additional sum of €10.7 million has been made available, which includes €2.8 million to fund new developments in the ambulance service, for example, the development of alternative pathways to care, with the "hear and treat" clinical hub expected to go live soon in the national emergency operations centre. This will divert some lower acuity patients to alternative care pathways and will free up some emergency capacity. In time, it is hoped that such initiatives will help to improve response times around the country, including in the west Roscommon area.

I should also mention that the capacity review identified particular difficulties serving rural areas such as County Roscommon. Outside the greater Dublin area, the population is widely dispersed with a relatively large population living in rural areas. Due to this population distribution, Ireland has a far higher percentage of activity in rural areas than other ambulance services. This is something with which we must grapple. When we compare ourselves with other jurisdictions, our population is dispersed in a different way. That is a good and welcome thing, but it means that there are extra challenges in ensuring that we get ambulances to every part of this country as quickly as we would like. We need to approach these challenges head on.

As well as additional investment in the ambulance service, the review indicated that one of the practical ways of improving first response times was through our community first responder, CFR, schemes. I am pleased that the NAS is working closely with local CFR groups across the country in order to develop and enhance services.

I assure the House that the NAS is focused on improving the ambulance service in west Roscommon and throughout the country. I will bring directly to the NAS the concerns and points highlighted by Deputy Eugene Murphy on the floor of Dáil Éireann. I will ask that the NAS revert directly to the Deputy on those specific issues.

See this speech in context