Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The issue is very urgent and I am anxious to hear the response from the Department. I take the Minister of State's point, but I will proceed. Perhaps the Leader will examine the issue generally of which Ministers or Ministers of State come to the House to take particular Commencement matters.

My question relates to the need for a rapid response ambulance service in County Roscommon, asks specifically about the total number of ambulances, their location and personnel, that are available in the county each day, and seeks an explanation for the unsatisfactory response times. The current situation is totally inadequate and unacceptable to the people of Roscommon and surrounding areas, who have had no accident and emergency service at Roscommon County Hospital since 2011 when it was closed by the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government which falsely promised a rapid response ambulance service. The HSE has failed to deliver that service in the four years since the wrongful closure of the accident and emergency department.

The Sunday Timeson 10 May included an exclusive story by Eoin Young-Murphy, an investigative journalist with the Roscommon People. Mr. Young-Murphy unearthed an e-mail from Liam McMullen, consultant surgeon at Roscommon County Hospital, criticising the HSE's failure to deliver an ambulance service to the county following the closure of the accident and emergency department four years ago. In correspondence between Mr. McMullen and the Minister for Health, which was obtained under freedom of information, the surgeon claimed the hospital's patients had been "thrown to the wolves".

Mr. McMullen e-mailed the Minister on 13 January after watching an RTE "Prime Time" report of a leaked study which claimed Ireland is too rural to meet recommended ambulance response times. Mr. McMullen wrote: "You wonder why I, a long-time Fine Gael supporter, will now be voting for local independent candidates." He said there was no longer any way to justify to the public the closure of the accident and emergency unit:

It was hard enough to try to explain why you were closing Roscommon A&E department and to put some kind of honest medical, surgical reasoning behind the decision. That reasoning was based on the promise of an adequate rapid response ambulance service. This is manifestly not in place nor apparently will it ever be.

According to guidelines drawn up by the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, in 80% of cases, an ambulance should arrive at the scene of a life-threatening incident within 90 minutes. According to the national ambulance service figures for last November, this target was met in only 50% of cases in counties Roscommon, Mayo and Galway.

Mr. McMullen also was critical in his e-mail of the HSE decision to commission a UK consultancy firm, Lightfoot Solutions, to undertake a review of the ambulance service. He urged the Minister:

Stop listening to the HSE management. They would not know a patient if they fell over one. Their only goal is to advance up their own management ladder. This means parking their problems with yet another management consultants' firm from England at huge cost.

He went on to criticise the HSE's inability to make decisions: "On no account will they take a decision about anything other than to make sure that no trouble lands on their boss's plate, so that their own future advancement is secure." Mr. McMullen advised the Minister not to cut himself off from what is happening in hospitals. He wrote: "You are quite happy to cocoon yourself in and to be unquestionably reassured by ... management blather and deceitfulness... You have lost all sense of judgment and analysis."

This document was secured under freedom of information, as I said. Mr. McMullen's words are particularly striking given that he was among those who justified the closure of the accident and emergency unit in Roscommon at the time on the basis of the promise from Government of the provision of a rapid response ambulance service. That did not materialise, of course, and it is due to the diligent work of Mr. Young-Murphy that this correspondence has come to light. It is a fairly dramatic development. The people of Roscommon are very aggrieved that the Taoiseach and previous Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, as Opposition Deputies, gave written commitments before the 2011 general election that the accident and emergency department would be open on a 24-7 basis, 365 days per year. There has been an absolute betrayal of that undertaking to the people of Roscommon. The e-mail from Mr. McMullen to the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, is quite explosive.