Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

To be fair, we are talking about 430,000 urgent and emergency calls in 2024. That is the scale of this issue. It is a 32,000-calls increase, or an 8% increase, on 2023. The Deputy has done the statistics. Performance is improving with 72.5% in 2023 to 73.2%. against a 75% target for life-threatening cardiac or respiratory arrest. We have to look at alternative care pathways as well. The Deputy mentioned the rapid response car. I have had experiences myself where that has been far more effective and fast in cases that maybe did not quite require an ambulance once one had the confidence of either a GP or a medic who could say "Look, we can manage this in a certain way and get the person to a hospital". We have to use the resource to the optimum. That is the objective. One of the biggest issues has been turnover time at hospitals at times of high demand in emergency departments. They are working to improve that outcome.

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