Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Sinn Féin motion. We are supporting it. I want to speak on two specific scenarios as they relate to my county of Cork. They certainly reflect the experiences of the Sinn Féin Deputies as they related stories from their constituencies. An email I received from a person stated that on the previous Saturday an elderly man aged 85 crashed into two parked cars on the side of the Ballyhooly road coming out of Glanworth. I am being deliberately parochial because it needs to be highlighted. The email stated:

The man called the ambulance immediately. The man was informed the ambulance would be 20 mins. I offered 1st aid at the scene. The man appeared ok but had pain in chest and down his left arm. The fire brigade attended the scene quickly ... The man was kept in the car waiting for the ambulance. The fire brigade crew kept him as comfortable as possible with blankets and a tarpaulin. The emergency services told the man that his ambulance had been diverted to a heart attack and his ambulance was cancelled. An advanced paramedic did arrive about 1.5 hrs after the accident had happened. Around the same time a local doctor ... saw the lights and came to help. The gardai were on the scene throughout. Eventually 2.5 hrs after the accident, as the night was cold and wet, the man had to be taken from the car and brought to a neighbour's house for his health and safety. At this point there was 5 fire engines, 3 garda vehicles and an advanced paramedic on the scene. They were able to clear the rd and open it again. It was 3 hrs 20 mins before an ambulance eventually came and it was 4 hrs after the accident before the man left in the ambulance for hospital.

This is quite a typical case. I mentioned the location because I want to put on record that it is a rural area in Cork but no more than a 20-minute drive from Cork city and the nearest tertiary hospital and no more than half an hour from the nearest secondary care facility. This is happening and it needs to be acknowledged. I grant that the Minister has acknowledged the problem. I absolutely accept that he has said more financial resources are being deployed to deal with the issue and that he is in the process of recruiting 200 additional paramedics who are going through the system.

There is a legitimate expectation on the part of every citizen to expect that emergency services operate on the basis of the pre-hospital emergency care guidelines and that there is a time limit by which each call will be triaged. It is very clear to me that if there has been a change in the protocols when people ring the emergency phone line calling for an ambulance, that change has not been communicated to our citizens. If there has been a shift in what people's legitimate expectations are in respect of an ambulance coming to a scene and if there have been some changes in these protocols then they certainly have not been communicated to the public. This needs to be addressed.

Notwithstanding all of this, the simple thing that occurred in the incident I detailed was that there should not have been any ambiguity in any protocol for pre-hospital guidelines involving an 85-year-old man in a road traffic accident. There should not be any ambiguity about the need to ensure that an ambulance arrives on time and within the pre-hospital guidelines. This is why I am articulating the case.

I also received the following email from a paramedic:

I'm a paramedic in the National Ambulance Service and I've recently learned of a Bantry/Fermoy ambulance crew who crashed returning to base ... apparently a result of exhaustion.

The crew in question had clocked up 600 km+ in one shift. Thankfully neither the crew or another road user was seriously injured ...

The crew escaped with little or no injuries however the next time the crew, the potential patient they carry and other road users may not be so lucky.

This is a result of NEOC (national emergency operational control) and national ambulance service managements refusing to treat paramedic/emts with the dignity they're entitled to and deserve

This runs to the heart of the issue. It really does need to be sorted.

We welcome the motion. I am delighted to see it this evening. In this country at present, not only are people not guaranteed access to a GP or access to an out-of-hours GP service, they cannot even be sure whether they will get an ambulance if they need it. Something is going seriously wrong. The place is going to hell in a hand cart fairly lively. I know we are in the middle of a pandemic. We all understand this. The testimonies the Minister has heard this evening are crucial. We need to see the ship being turned around quickly to ensure people have confidence that the system will deliver for them and that at a very minimum an 85-year-old man could have the legitimate expectation for all of his years that if he was involved in a road traffic accident, the case would be prioritised.

The issue raised by Deputy Cullinane on the length of time that ambulances spend in emergency departments needs to be tackled. It is not good enough for the Minister to say HSE has commissioned a review into the issue with a view to identifying which remedial measures might assist in the efficient release of ambulance resources from emergency departments. We have known for ages that this has been going on. I could not put a timeline on it. The dogs on the street know that ambulances have been backed up at emergency departments since Adam was a boy.

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