John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Since I was elected, I have been finding it difficult to figure out the rationale of decision makers in this country. In Dublin, we have the second best fire and ambulance service in the world. It is second behind Seattle. Now we have a city manager who wants to disassemble it. We have an inadequate ambulance service in this country, purely because of a lack of resources, not because of the quality of the personnel, who are doing a great job. There simply are not enough of them. Why are we trying to fix a service in Dublin that is not broken? We have the man who wanted to reduce the quays to a cycle lane now wanting to destroy the fire and ambulance service. Incidentally, he is not a Garth Brooks fan. We have a service that almost guarantees a response time of eight minutes in Dublin, while in the rest of the country it is 40 to 50 minutes. Yesterday, there was the start of balloting for strike action within the fire service right across the country purely because they want to downgrade the fire service, our best emergency service. It is a disgrace. These people need to be reined in. I ask the Leader for a debate in this House with both the Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar, and the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Kelly, on the future of the fire and ambulance service, because these services should be combined right across the country.