David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with my colleagues. I commend the Regional Group for tabling this motion. We tabled a similar motion last night and the response from the Minister, which was a scripted speech on the motion, was nothing short of disgraceful. Rather than accepting the reality of the challenges that paramedics in the NAS and patients face, with lengthening wait times for ambulances as shown in the data presented to us by the HSE, the Minister spent most of his time attacking the Opposition and my party and seeking to hide behind the hard work of paramedics. It is about time he got his head out of the sand and started to face up to the challenges and problems in the NAS.

Healthcare and emergency care workers are faced with difficult and challenging circumstances in hospitals, as are front-line paramedics in the NAS. Last week, at the Joint Committee on Health, we heard directly from the NAS and the Dublin Fire Brigade that capacity is being outpaced by demand and that the increase in demand is putting a huge burden on the NAS. Response times have increased by 50% since 2019 for the two category 1 life-threatening call-outs, echo and delta. A 50% increase since 2019 is substantial but the length of time people are waiting for an emergency response increased from an average of 18 minutes in 2019 to 27 minutes in 2020. In the south east, where I live, the average wait time is 33 minutes for a life-threatening incident call-out. We should bear in mind that this is a region that does not have 24-7 emergency cardiac care so people depend on the NAS to bring them to Dublin or Cork if they have a cardiac emergency.

We know what needs to happen and we have said this to the Minister for some time. We need a comprehensive workforce plan to train and recruit more paramedics. The NAS tells us it has to recruit an additional 2,000 staff over the next five to six years, yet it is nowhere near reaching that capacity. Much more needs to be done. If we are to properly support staff in the NAS, we need to put that workforce plan in place.

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