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

Most of the costs incurred by the National Ambulance Service are not emergency calls, they are inter-hospital transfer and transfer of neonates and transfer of patients and so on. That is the bulk of the work that is done. The difficulty in Dublin at the moment as identified by HIQA is that we currently have two call centres and calls are passed between Dublin Fire Brigade and the National Ambulance Service. There are problems with that and in my constituency there was a three hour delay in somebody getting an ambulance because a call was not passed on. That is not a satisfactory situation. Thankfully it was an alpha call, so it was not a serious emergency but it could happen that people do not get an ambulance because calls are not passed between the two call centres. That is not a satisfactory situation. It is also not satisfactory that the nearest ambulance is not sent. One might get through to the Dublin Fire Brigade and it might send its nearest ambulance which is ten minutes away but not the National Ambulance Service which is five minutes away. It is just commonsense that we bring together dispatch and call taking, and there are differences in clinical audit. That is what we are trying to change. It does not mean that there will be any reduction in the number of Dublin Fire Brigade ambulances serving Dublin. That is not intended. I am happy to state that very clearly.

In terms of any cost cutting agenda, the budget for the National Ambulance Service will increase by €5.2 million this year. Most of that will be targeted at strengthening services in the west where there are gaps but if there is an agenda on cost cutting it is not coming from the HSE or the Department of Health. We are increasing the budget for ambulance services but what we want is efficiency. We do not want two vehicles turning up for an asthma attack when one is enough. We would rather those two were circulating separately picking up people much more quickly, so we want a bang for the taxpayer's buck.

There is a separate dispute involving Dublin Fire Brigade and crewing levels. That does not involve the HSE or the Department of Health, but is a matter between Dublin City Council and the unions and I am not going to get involved in that.

I am happy to engage in a future debate on ambulance services whether in Dublin or in the country as a whole because we are due to get the national capacity review on ambulance services quite soon and also the review on Dublin services in particular, so it would be opportune to have a longer debate as has been suggested by Senators at a later date.