Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Healy-Rae for his intervention. I base that on the fact that when people give commitments as to what their targets are going to be for the year and then exceed those commitments, that is a good sign. Deputy Collins talked about the cases, and he is right to highlight them. I do not in any way dismiss them but when it comes to the published KPIs for the National Ambulance Service targets for purple and red calls, that is, life-threatening and cardiac life-threatening calls, the National Ambulance Service has exceeded those targets. To the end of July, 76% of calls in the purple area were being responded to within 19 minutes. I can understand that when something goes wrong the Deputy will want to highlight the case, as he should. We should continue to improve the services but this is an area in which we have genuinely improved service times. A lot of innovation is going on in the National Ambulance Service, with new services, the use of advanced paramedics and new training models. We will continue to invest and support the service and we look forward to doing more in the next HSE service plan.

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