Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this very important motion before the House. We have all had experiences of hearing from constituents of the crisis in the ambulance service. Before going into that, I thank most sincerely the people who operate the service in County Kerry with whom I have considerable dealings. The personnel in the ambulances are excellent, kind, diligent, hard-working and put in very long hours. I meet them regularly when they are finishing shifts, starting shifts and in between shifts. They are very frustrated, to say the least, at how the system is being managed.

Considering the size of County Kerry, it is totally crazy how often the Iveragh Peninsula in south Kerry, for instance, might be left with no ambulance whatsoever. There are times when Killarney, the tourism capital of the western world, is left with no ambulance service because the ambulance goes to Cork. When the button is released and an ambulance has discharged its patients, it could be sent up to Tipperary. These types of situations are happening over and over again. It is beyond belief that it is being allowed to continue.

I was one of the most vocal critics in this country of the centralising of the ambulance service when it was taken away from the system that we had in the past. I did so at the time because I knew taking away the local knowledge and the local system would be detrimental and unfortunately, I was proven right. It was brought here to a disused fire station where they put in two different types of computers that could not talk to each other for a long time and the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing. Ambulances were going east and west, and the people in ambulance control did not know what was happening. It was a completely shambolic system.

I agree with the motion. I again thank Sinn Féin for tabling it. Each of us is demanding that the ambulance service be put right in the interest of the safety of the patients it deals with.

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