Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I raise the issue of road safety, especially in advance of the bank holiday weekend. Fatality statistics are trending in the wrong direction again, which is unfortunate and sad. At the last count, there were already 79 fatalities this year, which is ten more than the same period last year. We know what the reasons are for these things. We know it is driver behaviour, speeding, driving under the influence, being distracted by mobile phones and sometimes weather conditions, but one factor that is never really mentioned is the pre-hospital medical trauma system. Will a functioning pre-hospital trauma system reduce the number of collisions? No, but it would certainly mitigate the downstream consequences and improve viability, survivability and outcomes.

Ireland is fortunate to have two helicopters on station at the moment, one in Cork and one in Athlone. They provide a very good service at paramedic and advanced paramedic level within their scope of practice. Those two services have saved hundreds of lives since they were conceived a number of years ago but Ireland is unusual and an outlier in that we do not have an multidisciplinary medical team on board these helicopters, specifically consultant anaesthetists and consultant emergency medical physicians. We have paramedics and advanced paramedics, but not full multidisciplinary teams. All the international evidence suggests that when a multidisciplinary team is put together, there are far better outcomes. The reason is simple. They would be much more capable of doing advanced interventions at the roadside or at the point of injury. I am talking about intubation, advanced resuscitation and blood transfusion. Wales has six of these helicopter emergency medical system, HEMS, teams. Northern Ireland has two of them but this jurisdiction has none. Would the Taoiseach be prepared to meet a group of consultant physicians, listen to them and hear their arguments for upgrading our pre-trauma helicopter medical service so that we can all work together to reduce the number of fatalities on our roads? If he would be happy with that meeting, on top of it, will he task the HSE to look at the proposal to see whether it is viable and whether we can end the carnage taking place on our motorways and other roads?

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