Robbie Gallagher (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I raise my grave concerns about the lack of adequate ambulance services in County Monaghan. This week, 16 12-hour shifts in the county will not be covered by local personnel, while next week, an estimated 19 12-hour shifts will not be covered by local personnel in Monaghan. Until now, we have had about 22 fully rostered staff in the county, located in both Monaghan and Castleblaney. There have for some time been four vacancies, which the National Ambulance Service has been unsuccessful in filling. The four vacant shifts were being filled by the local crews who were on overtime to cover them.

Now, management at national level has made a very strange decision that that will no longer be the case and that these shifts will be covered by crews coming from as far away as Finglas, County Dublin, and Dundalk. That might be well and dandy were those crews available, but the likelihood is that those crews might be called out to incidents in their own areas and as a result Monaghan would not be covered by any ambulance crew. That is not good enough. I ask the Deputy Leader to arrange, as a matter of urgency, for the Minister for Health to come to the Chamber so that we can discuss this serious and alarming development, which cannot be allowed continue. Until such time as that happens, I appeal to the National Ambulance Service management at national level to revert to the existing arrangement, whereby local staff kindly facilitated filling those shifts by way of overtime so that the people of Monaghan could have an adequate ambulance service, which they richly deserve, like every other county in the State.