Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not disagree with the Deputy one bit about the value of the service they are providing. The National Ambulance Service prudently is seeking a ruling on whether there is a benefit-in-kind liability and has informed people there may be a liability to put them on notice of that. We await a determination.

The review is useful more broadly because it will look at the scale of use of response vehicles for out-of-hours, as I said, but it will also determine the benefit and balance of the use of those vehicles out of hours compared to others existing out-of-hours or voluntary responses including, as we all know, the community first responder schemes. We have 300 of those schemes and 4,000 community first responder volunteers nationwide, which is extraordinary. We also have the NAS off-duty responder scheme, where we have 682 National Ambulance Service staff involved.

Pending the results of the review, the National Ambulance Service took it upon itself to inform people there may be a benefit-in-kind liability. Had it not done that, it would have been rightly criticised for being aware there may be a liability that would accrue to people and not having informed them. We await a ruling of the Revenue Commissioners on it.

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