John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move:

"That Dáil Éireann:recognises that:

— the Dublin Fire Brigade (DFB) has been providing crucial ambulance services to the citizens of Dublin City and County since 1898;

— DFB now operates with life-saving equipment and over 800 trained firefighter/paramedics working to provide immediate medical assistance to members of the public in need of treatment, 24/7, 365 days a year; and

— staff must be lauded for their ability to respond to thousands of emergency calls across the capital every year;

accepts that:

— there are concerns that the Health Service Executive is seeking to remove the delivery of Dublin's ambulance service from DFB and instead merge the service with the National Ambulance Service;

— such a proposal could have a huge negative impact on the delivery of services from the DFB call centre; and

— removing any element of DFB's fire-based Emergency Medical Service (EMS) system will have an adverse effect on safeguarding those in our community; and

calls on the Government to commit to:

— the provision of full support for the almost 1,000 personnel employed, to maximise service delivery and provide greater efficiency to protect those in fire stations across Dublin who provide a full-time fire, rescue, and ambulance service which serves the whole community;

— the design of a direct funding mechanism and the required additional capacity due to the increased population, to allow DFB to continue to operate all areas of their fire-based EMS; and

— the full retention of ambulance services provided by DFB across Dublin."

I wish to share time with my colleagues, Deputies Haughey, Darragh O'Brien and Curran. I will take six minutes.

I welcome the members of Dublin Fire Brigade emergency medical service, EMS, who are in the Gallery in numbers and who are outside Dáil Éireann tonight, and commend and thank them and their colleagues who throughout the capital - and of course, members of the National Ambulance Service throughout the country - keep us safe and respond so speedily and efficiently, and often heroically, in the service of their fellow citizens.

It is not a cliché to say we are disappointed on this side of the House to see that the Minister for Health is not here. I suppose that makes its own statement to those in the Gallery, those watching outside and those reading the accounts of this debate, in demonstration of the seriousness or otherwise with which the Government takes this motion from this side of the House.

My colleagues on this side of the House hope that this will be the last occasion on which this matter needs to feature on the Dáil agenda. My colleagues, Deputies Darragh O’Brien and Seán Haughey in this House, and Senators Clifford-Lee and Ardagh in the Seanad, have raised this matter repeatedly and will continue to raise it because no progress has been made.

No progress has been made in spite of the subject being previously raised during Private Members' business, Topical Issues and parliamentary questions, and that is merely within the Houses of the Oireachtas. No progress has been made in spite of a review group and an expert panel having been established to resolve the issue. That expert panel was made up in part of eminent servants of this city and State and the great bulk of its findings were accepted by all sides to this discussion with very little left to settle.

The Minister for Health, in correspondence, has suggested that there are no plans to allow Dublin Fire Brigade EMS to be taken over by the HSE. The Minister is also suggesting that he will support calls to consider future funding mechanisms. I welcome both of these sentiments. However, so much time has passed on this issue, and so many reviews and reports have been done without any action that the Minister, who is not here, will forgive me for being sceptical. Perhaps the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, will accept my scepticism in his place.

I have to ask why the Minister of State at the Department of Health is even responding for the Government on this issue and ask why the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government is not here in her place because Dublin City Council is funded in part by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. The Dublin Fire Brigade and ambulance service ought to be funded by that Department but it is not, and on this side of the House we will not be satisfied until the Minister of State present here tonight confirms that the future funding mechanisms that the senior Minister has in mind refer to the transfer of the funding of Dublin Fire Brigade and ambulance service from the Department of Health to the Department of Housing Planning and Local Government. The Taoiseach, in his time as Minister for Health, reinforced this fact in a Seanad debate in 2015, only three years ago, when he stated:

[T]he Dublin ambulance service has been provided by Dublin Fire Brigade under fire services legislation. Statutory responsibility for this service, therefore, rests [...] within the remit of my colleague, the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government.

However, here we have the charade again of where the Minister for Health and his Minister of State are taking the issue.

This is about a number of key issues, not least of which are patient safety and a patient-centred approach to emergency response. We support the overriding importance of a person-centred response by emergency services in Dublin and that is why we so strongly support the retention of the fire-based emergency medical service in the hands of Dublin Fire Brigade and ambulance service.

When we examine the Government's assertion that there is no threat to Dublin Fire Brigade and ambulance service, the facts do not support it. The passage of time does not support it. Dublin Fire Brigade certainly does not support the assertion. Events do not support it. Action does not support it. Ministerial and Government inaction, unfortunately, reinforces the opposite view.

In spite of the Minister's reassurances, there is compelling evidence that the retention of this service within Dublin City Council and, therefore, within the realm of Dublin Fire Brigade is under threat. We recall the HSE plan in 2013 - the first attempt to absorb the services of Dublin Fire Brigade into the HSE. An implementation plan was drawn up — that is an incontrovertible fact. However, for the fact that its existence was leaked to a national newspaper, we do not know where we would be regarding this argument.

Around the same time, Dublin City Council and the Dublin Fire Brigade were put on notice effectively that funding for the service was in question. The demand by the HSE to have one national call centre dispatching ambulances and fire services was the next attempt to strangle Dublin Fire Brigade. The idea that a chief fire officer would cede control, and more importantly, responsibility for responding to and dispatching personnel to incidents makes no common sense. Case history informs us that the national call centre does not always dispatch the Dublin Fire Brigade and ambulance service, even when it is more proximate to an incident than other services. For that reason, the Minister is correct that current call-taking arrangements represent an unacceptably high patient safety risk.

Added to this is a recent warning from SIPTU of staffing issues in the National Emergency Operations Centre, NEOC. The headquarters of the NEOC is apparently down 35 workers. If one has an agency of State, that initiated a process, developed that process into an implementation plan for absorbing another service into its own realm and won the support of the so-called custodians of the very same service they were meant to uphold and protect, controlling the budget and unwilling to divest itself of it, which then wants to control the very means by which Dublin Fire Brigade and ambulance gets to do its work, which is through calls, then there are at least grounds for suspecting that someone does not want one around.

See this speech in context