Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

While the new cath lab that is to be built in Waterford is welcome, it will not make any difference in terms of helping emergency cardiac patients outside Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The meeting with the Minister last week was a decent one. He explained to us that he has been trying to get extra hours from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. or 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. That would help but it still leaves a huge window when people can need cardiac help and it is not available within 90 minutes. That is not good enough. He told us that the cardiac review would be finished by the end of June next year. Does the Minister of State think it is fair in particular for the people in Wexford? This is not parish pump politics, it just happens that they are furthest away from care. From the time Wexford General Hospital requests an ambulance to its arrival in St. James' Hospital is an average of two hours and 30 minutes. If someone goes to Wexford General Hospital they automatically go to St. James' Hospital. If they go to another hospital maybe in New Ross, I do not know if people are taken in there but they can end up going to Cork. International best practice is one hour. Ireland is working towards 90 minutes. It is completely unfair that a person in Wexford has to put up with two hours and 30 minutes. The Herity report was not fair from our point of view and it was a bit of a whitewash and now we are waiting for the results of another report. It is not fair that people have to wait for the report. Given what we got in the Herity report, people are a bit dubious about what the next one will say. The Government should be more proactive about anything less than 24-7 care within an hour and a half of the ambulance being first alerted, as that is only fair.

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