John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I agree totally with Senator O'Donovan. There is far too much red tape involved in the acquisition of medical cards, particularly in very straightforward cases such as that described by Senator O'Donovan.

We need a broad debate on the future of the ambulance service. We need to know the plan for the ambulance service in rural Ireland. Following the closure of the accident and emergency department in Roscommon things have got much worse. We were promised we would have an advanced paramedic at almost every crossroads to prove to us a better service would be in place than the accident and emergency department. In rural Ireland the average waiting time for an ambulance is between 40 and 50 minutes. Unfortunately at the weekend we had a tragic situation where a 19-year-old waited 40 minutes for an ambulance and when it arrived it appeared the poor young fellow had passed away. The ambulance arrived with no paramedic on board, giving him no chance of survival.

We then had the disgraceful scenario whereby someone from WestDoc could not come until an hour and a half later to pronounce the poor young man deceased. I do not blame the ambulance staff or the paramedics. The simple reality is we do not have enough of them. There is a very simple way to improve the situation. We need to train our first responder firemen to emergency medical technician, EMT, level. Every fire station has nine or ten personnel and three or four of them could be trained. We would then have first responders with EMT training who could be at a call in a matter of minutes. If we get cross-party support for this we can convince the Minister of the Environment, Community and Local Government and the Minister for Health to see the logic in it. I call for a serious debate on this issue.