Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)
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886. To ask the Minister for Health if he will consider utilising the services of fire fighters employed full time or on a part time retainer, across the State in their capacity as trained emergency first responders as a back up to the ambulance service when there is a possibility that the ambulance on call cannot respond to an emergency within an acceptable time frame. [27136/13]

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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1055. To ask the Minister for Health his views on correspondence (details supplied) regarding firefighters in County Meath; if he has concerns with this issue; if he has investigated the human resources elements to this question; if a closer working relationship between both emergency services to the benefit of the patient will be developed; if the new centralised Ambulance Call Centre at Townsend Street and then Tallaght will be given specific guidelines regarding which emergency service to call out and if he will publish these guidelines? [28085/13]

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 886 and 1055 together.

Statutory pre-hospital emergency care services for the State are provided by the HSE National Ambulance Service (NAS) and, on behalf of the NAS in the greater Dublin area, Dublin Fire Brigade. Emergency first responders include voluntary service providers such as St John Ambulance Brigade of Ireland, Irish Red Cross and the Order of Malta Ireland, and community first responders who are certified at emergency first responder level. A new policy in relation to first responders was approved on 27 March 2012. It will ensure that the integration of cardiac first responder schemes into priority 999 call responses has a robust governance framework in place.

There are two types of priority emergency call-out in Ireland for the NAS. ECHO calls are for situations involving life-threatening cardiac or respiratory arrest and DELTA calls involve life-threatening situations other than cardiac or respiratory arrest. The national standard for addressing ECHO and DELTA calls is the EMS Priority Dispatch Standard, which is issued by the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council (PHECC). Under this standard, ECHO calls may be responded to by cardiac first responders, but DELTA calls require a minimum response of a trained emergency first responder.

The HSE NAS, through its national control centre reconfiguration project, is continuing to rationalise the number of ambulance control rooms across the country, with a target of one national system. This project is focused on improving call taking and dispatch functions and on delivering improved technology. This will assist in improving response times and will allow the NAS to deploy emergency resources in a much more effective and efficient manner, on a regional and national basis rather than within small geographic areas, ensuring the most appropriate response to an incident.

The control centre reconfiguration project is consistent with international best practice and is endorsed by HIQA as the most appropriate approach to improve the quality of services to patients and facilitate investment in technologically enabled service delivery. The project is also a key element of Future Health: A Strategic Framework for Health Reform in Ireland 2012-2015. The NAS will continue to use the same structured process to answer 999/112 calls and to prioritise responses, callers will continue to be asked for direction to incidents, and special mapping tools will be in the Emergency Operations Centre which can plot the location of the incidents on the map. Responding crews can then be guided to the location in the normal way. In the later stages of this project, a new web-based satellite system will be introduced into all emergency vehicles so that paramedics can see the same map as the staff in the Emergency Operations Centre.

In relation to the specific queries raised by the Deputies, as these are service issues, I have asked the Health Service Executive to respond directly to the Deputies.