Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach. I welcome the Minister of State and thank the Taoiseach for the announcement last night that emergency medicine doctors are to crew the helicopter response service alongside paramedics for four months in a new trial. That is a huge step forward for the thousands of people who desperately need major pre-hospital trauma care. Ireland is an outlier in pre-hospital care. This has been highlighted through several years by a consultant expert group of Irish helicopter emergency medical service doctors. It has been driven by the fact that Northern Ireland has had this service since 2017. The UK and other European countries have it but we do not.Our pre-hospital system relies on paramedic-led emergency care, as opposed to physician-staffed helicopter emergency services that could complement what we already have. We lose critical time in getting patients to hospital to access physician-led emergency care. Other countries bring the hospital to the scene of the emergency, whether this is at the roadside, a home or a farm, or in an urban or rural area. It could be a road traffic accident, a gunshot or knife wound or a workplace injury.

In Northern Ireland, helicopters are dispatched by specially trained doctors to deliver lifesaving treatment undertaken by physicians. This includes surgery, emergency anaesthetic administration, blood transfusions and the management of airways in a way that can alleviate the impact of trauma and prevent brain injury. A review of the first five years of the service in Wales found that 63% of patients received pre-hospital care they would not have received otherwise. The number of patients dying as a result of blunt trauma injuries was 37% lower than if they had been attended to by an ambulance service only. The medical intervention was, on average, 29 minutes to 41 minutes faster than the standard 999 response time. Almost 5,000 cases of major trauma were treated in Irish hospitals in 2021 alone according to the most recent major trauma report of the National Office of Clinical Audit, NOCA. It is the biggest cause of death among children and young adults in Ireland. Apparently, these figures also do not capture those trauma patients who die before they reach hospital. We could be saving at least 300 lives annually and improving the outcomes for many others.

My questions relates to the announcement made yesterday. Will the doctors involved be specifically trained to operate with helicopters? I encourage engagement with the members of the international medical expert group who led this campaign, including Dr. Cunningham, Dr. Burns and Dr. Passmore. It should be ensured that they are consulted and this trial is successful. I believe Dr. Lisa Cunningham is the only trained helicopter emergency medical care consultant in Ireland.

Are our statistics working as they should? Does this aspect need to be addressed, especially in light of the increasing number of deaths on the roads? Regarding Northern Ireland, we have already established health co-operation on an all-island basis. It is an area we can be proud of and that we wish to build on. It seems to me that if we have the relevant expertise already with HEMS in the North we should be looking at this as an area for all-island co-operation. We need health equality.