Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I attempted to go down the parliamentary question route on this matter but without success. On ambulance targets, there is supposed to be a turnaround time of 60 minutes from when an ambulance drops a patient off at an emergency department and is ready to leave again. Some 22% of ambulances in Mayo failed to meet that target, taking more than an hour to get out of the emergency department. A response to a parliamentary question argued the Government was trying and that there was pressure on emergency departments at this time of year.

There is no ambulance service whatever in the part of south Mayo around Ballinrobe. It is physically impossible for ambulances in the current bases in Mayo to reach south Mayo, and specifically Ballinrobe, which has a significant population, in that timeframe to which I refer. We cannot afford to have ambulances taking longer than an hour to turn around when they cannot even get to where they are supposed to go in certain areas. Will the Taoiseach ask the Minister for Health to explore the possibility of a full-time base to cover south Mayo? Will he please try to address the turnaround times? Setting an hour as a turnaround time is already unambitious and not good enough. Not being able to meet that turnaround time is pretty appalling.

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