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

The acceptance of this motion by the Government is welcome. Even since this morning, its willingness has changed, not just in not opposing the motion as amended but in supporting it. This represents a victory for Dublin Fire Brigade and its emergency ambulance service and their supporters. However, the devil is very much in the detail. The Ministers of State have kept saying there is no threat to Dublin Fire Brigade and ambulance service and no plan to absorb it into the HSE or place it under the control of the HSE. We must look again at where the notion of that threat came from.

An agency of the State, the HSE, initiated a process to absorb Dublin Fire Brigade and ambulance service into the HSE. It developed an implementation plan and won the support of the so-called custodians of that service, namely, the city and county managers. The HSE controlled the budget and was unwilling to divest itself of it to Dublin Fire Brigade. The HSE wanted to control the very means by which Dublin Fire Brigade and ambulance service gets to do its work by controlling the call and dispatch centre. It was then by stealth that the HSE sought to absorb the services of Dublin Fire Brigade into and unto itself. That is where that threat came from and the notion that the Government had no idea about it is just folly.

Anybody close to this issue will notice the difference in tone in the Minister of State's scripted speech this evening, the first response to the motion. It is completely different from the tone on previous occasions when we raised this issue and for that we are grateful. However, there are still a couple of uninformed stings in the initial contribution by the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, who stated:

[Dublin Fire Brigade] requests for [National Ambulance Service] assistance can be in the region of 1,000 per week. Sometimes [Dublin Fire Brigade] passes calls in batches which presents challenges to the [National Ambulance Service].

This is a question of capacity. Dublin Fire Brigade had 82,000 mobilisations last year. If it is not responding it is because it does not have the tenders or ambulances. It is a question of capacity and resources. I do not like the little implication in the Minister of State's speech that it is the fault of Dublin Fire Brigade and ambulance service that it did not respond to calls and batches of calls were handed back to the National Ambulance Service.

We would like to see the full implementation of the report of the expert panel on pre-hospital emergency care services in Dublin, which was published in 2015. We believe, as recommended in that report, that the installation should take place of terminals in both call centres, to which Deputy Jack Chambers referred, with additional resources and funding. The Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, has gestured towards that tonight and it is new. When the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, discussed this a number of months ago it was not countenanced. I acknowledge the real progress that has been made. However, the call centre issue is not resolved although it is covered in the report of the expert panel. The measure has a cost of €20,000. We suggest that it would be possible to trial this technology for a period acceptable to the HSE, the national call centre, Dublin Fire Brigade and Dublin City Council. As the motion is calling for that anyway, in agreeing to support it, the Government is indicating that it is essentially put in place.

Many messages go out from this Chamber to the fire officers and crews who are in the Gallery this evening. One is a message to Owen Keegan. The Minister has essentially gone over the city manager's head. The city manager was ready to divest himself of an aspect of a service of which he is meant to be custodian. Legislation provides that he is custodian. A Minister has given him an answer. Because crews of Dublin Fire Brigade and ambulance service's fire-based EMS service have at least four paramedics, sometimes including an advanced paramedic - I am told it takes at least four paramedics to deal with a cardiac arrest - 27 lives were saved in 2017 and 20 lives were saved in 2016.

I am happy to commend the motion, together with my colleagues who have spoken tonight, including Deputies Jack Chambers, Haughey, Darragh O'Brien, and Curran.

I am very happy the Government is supportive of it and that it has changed its tune considerably since the last time we raised the issue but the devil is in the detail and we, along with members and representatives of the Dublin Fire Brigade, will be looking for a meeting with the Minister in the next two weeks to drive this process through to completion.

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