Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Most of us have a story about how brilliant our ambulance paramedics and personnel are. They are the men and women we hope to never meet but when we need them we want to see them as quickly as possible. I know my local ambulance base in Maynooth very well. I campaigned about it having its hours cut during the austerity Government of Fine Gael and Labour in 2012. Ever since then Maynooth and the surrounding towns of north Kildare have no ambulance operating from the Maynooth base every Thursday from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. If an ambulance is requested in our area during those hours on a Thursday it has to come from further afield, from west Dublin or Tallaght. It has even come from as far away as Cavan. This has drastically increased response times and as the Minister is aware, response times are critical in cases of acute emergencies.

As a result of the ambulance cuts some of us got together to found the Maynooth community first responders in my town a few years ago. The local ambulance personnel in Maynooth were of great support to us, along with the National Ambulance Service, NAS. I pay tribute to our ambulance personnel, both the front-line paramedics and the operational staff in Kildare North for what they do. They are certainly not valued by the Minister for Health and his Government. That is what they say to me. That failure can be seen in the way our ambulance personnel cannot respond in the way they wish to and as HIQA recommends that they should. The target is that 80% of life-threatening emergencies should be responded to in 19 minutes. We are simply not meeting that target. As already outlined by our health spokesman, an Teachta Cullinane, the Government neglect of this essential service has seen that percentage fall through the floor. The NAS says it needs to double its staffing complement by 2026. It also needs to increase paramedic personnel by more than 1,300 paramedics in that same period. We know, because we listen. In the last budget, the Minister did not listen to NAS. It told the Minister it wanted a multi-year capacity and workforce plan. This is what we are calling on the Minister to provide in this motion. It needs this in order to plan for the future, to meet the emergency health needs of citizens throughout the State. The Minister has to start looking after the people who matter.

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