Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

About two weeks ago, I had a bit of a scare sitting in my car outside a retail store in south County Dublin. Such was the scare that I felt the need to call an ambulance. The ambulance came, collected me and brought me to the local accident and emergency unit within 25 minutes. Within two hours, I was seen by a cardiac specialist. Within eight hours I was seen by a consultant cardiologist, and within a couple of hours thereafter I had an angiogram and was back in my bed. While I lay in my bed I was considering trauma centres.

This brings me on to Senator Mulherin's point on the forgotten west. If I were in Belmullet or some other such place and had a similar scare, how long would it be before an ambulance would get to me? How long would it be before I would get to see a consultant? How long would it be before I would have the confidence, on having an angiogram, to know all was well? It certainly would not happen in a short space of time.

That led me to think about two trauma centres, in Dublin and Cork. I do not want a debate on trauma centres because there is nobody here qualified to debate the clinicians' view of trauma centres but I do want a debate on how we will support the trauma centres with helicopters to get patients to them within a specific period. They say an hour is the magic time. Therefore, we need to hear that there will be four regional helicopters to service the needs of people who find themselves in traumatic circumstances. I would like the Minister to come to the House at his leisure to discuss how we will do that. God knows where we will get the money to do it.