Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Collins for raising the matter. The Minister for Health became aware of this on Monday morning and, as the Deputy has requested, he had intervened by Monday afternoon to resolve the matter. Once it was brought to the Minister’s attention, he took swift action. I commend him for that because this never should have happened and it was never the intention that it would happen.

As a Government, we have significantly increased investment in the National Ambulance Service and, in fact, we have increased it by 37% since 2019 or, in other words, by €63 million. The budget for the National Ambulance Service for 2024 is €231 million. When it comes to staffing levels, there are 419 additional staff working in the National Ambulance Service than there were at the end of 2019. Tens of millions of euro of additional funding and hundreds of additional people working in the National Ambulance Service is the record of this Government in terms of investment in our ambulance service.

I would like to receive information on the cases Deputy Collins referenced. It is important that he highlighted them and I thank him for doing so. I am sure we will ask the National Ambulance Service to consider them in the context of how it meets the needs of patients. The National Ambulance Service continues to experience significant growth in demand. I think 398,000 calls were received from the public last year, which is an increase of around 14% on 2019. Despite year-on-year increases in demand, the National Ambulance Service has improved service response times further this year for what it calls purple - cardiac life-threatening - and red - life-threatening - call responses. In fact, this year, it has exceeded its own key performance indicators, KPIs, published in the HSE national service plan. It gave a commitment in terms of response times and it has exceeded that commitment. It will continue to drive service improvement.

To be very clear, the Minister for Health and the Government are keen to ensure there is no reduction of emergency response ambulance services in Cork and Kerry. I regret that there was legitimate concern around that earlier this week before the Minister intervened.

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