Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

How many front-line response ambulances do we have in the country? How many supervisory officers do we have in ambulance cars who have not been rostered in the community? How many calls per week or per month do the supervisory officers make or attend? I am calling for a full review of the service, like a Garda division. There needs to be a front-line medical section and a clerical section. As training of an advanced paramedic is quite specialised, why does the National Ambulance Service expect paramedics to perform clerical duties and run budgets? I understand that paramedics are being used in test centres. How can this happen when we have a shortage in the ambulance service? Ambulance staff and paramedics save lives. Surely we should have fewer ambulance cars and more ambulances.

I think a service agreement for a call to be turned around in 90 seconds is important. However, why is this not applicable to a journey response - a time to get to the patient? This also needs to be monitored. It is unbelievable to hear that an ambulance from Cork is servicing Kerry and an ambulance from Limerick is servicing Tipperary, Cork and Kerry. Talking about a 90-second response time for an ambulance is brilliant but it takes an hour and 45 minutes to get to the patient. That is crazy.

I have seen ambulance paramedics told to go to an accident an hour and a half away. An hour into the journey, they are turned around to go back to their station again because another ambulance can get there sooner. There should be an ambulance service for each individual county and cover for areas that need it. The 90 seconds to get an ambulance out is absolute nuts. We need to ensure we have the correct number of ambulances. We need to get rid of the ambulance cars and put in more ambulances.

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