Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. Is ceist an-tábhachtach í. Over the past 20 years, there has been significant professionalisation of the entire area of medical technicians and the entire ambulance service. Much of that was informed by international best practice, such as in the development of the standards of training for emergency medical technicians, which replaced a different kind of approach prior to that. First and foremost, getting a qualified EMT to a scene is the best chance for a person to survive, as opposed to getting the person to a hospital perhaps 30 miles away - the first responder is key. That side of the transformation in the past 20 years though the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council, PHECC, has worked.

The other side is the centralisation of the call-out system, to which the Deputy referred, versus a regionalised hub approach. I will talk to the Minister about this again. Investment has increased continuously. In the National Ambulance Service it has gone up by 37% since 2019. The NAS has an allocation this year of €231 million and there are about 2,380 people working in it now, representing staff growth of approximately 447 since the end of 2019. That is a 23% increase in staff. There has been an increase in staff and investment and there are ongoing campaigns to recruit more qualified paramedics, student paramedics, emergency medical technicians and emergency call-takers. There is significant growth in demand for services, with 389,000 calls received in 2023. That is an increase of approximately 14% since the end of 2019. The National Ambulance Service states that its national performance for cardiac and other life-threatening call responses exceeds HSE national service plan key performance indicator, KPI, targets, showing improvements on the 2023 performance.

The HSE has stated that the National Ambulance Service dynamically deploys its ambulance resources in line with international best practice. It deals with higher acuity calls versus lower acuity calls and how they are triaged - it can change from lower to higher acuity between a call. It is worth having a review or engagement and perhaps a greater discussion around that so people understand what international best practice says in this situation as to the optimum model for the deployment of ambulances. I will discuss this with the Minister.

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