Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein)

I call for an urgent debate on the National Ambulance Service. In an article today in my local newspaper, The Anglo-Celt, a whistleblower from the National Ambulance Service contacted the newspaper to express concern about ambulance cover in Cavan, which is at an unsafe level. The newspaper also reports that morale among staff is at an all-time low. There are also obvious recruitment and retention issues. It states that Cavan is regularly left with reduced numbers of ambulances. If the roster is left as it is for the week beginning 17 November, it is going to be very unsafe. There is only one ambulance rostered for that night at the Cavan ambulance station. This happened a couple of times in October as well when there were days when there should have been four ambulances on and there were only three. It means that an ambulance from Finglas must come into Cavan to cover, but if the service receives a call-out in Finglas, the ambulance will not make it to Cavan to ensure it can cover any call-outs there.

The newspaper also reports that ambulances in Cavan are sometimes called into Mullingar. In one case, the crew drove past Mullingar hospital to get to someone and by the time they got there, the person had got so fed up waiting they had made their own way to the hospital, so the whole journey was wasted. Why was that incident not serviced by the ambulance service in Westmeath?

As well as the rostering issue, there is also a recruitment and retention issue. The situation in Monaghan is similar, with paramedics in Drogheda having to answer calls in Monaghan and ambulances from Swords having to travel to Monaghan. I call for an urgent debate on this issue. There has been an increase in the number of call-outs, but that is to be expected with the increase in population. We need to increase recruitment and ensure retention within the service.