Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will touch briefly on five points. I am not sure these are exact figures but I think Senator Darragh O'Brien said the HSE pays €9.2 million per year to Dublin Fire Brigade which accounts for 6.7% of the budget for the National Ambulance Service. On the face of it that would seem very little given that Dublin has one third of the population of the country. We must bear in mind that the vast majority of ambulance calls in Dublin, as is the case around the country, are not emergency calls. One needs to factor that into any of the budgets. If it is the case that Dublin Fire Brigade deals with 40% of emergency calls, it probably deals with 0% of non-emergency calls, so the vast majority of transport provided in Dublin by ambulance is provided by the National Ambulance Service. It is important to make that-----