Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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154. To ask the Minister for Health if he will bring forward legislation making it mandatory to make a defibrillator available in each public building; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45411/17]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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In 2014 HIQA published a health technology assessment on providing defibrillators in public spaces. They found that, based on available evidence, none of the public access defibrillation programmes that were assessed were considered cost-effective using conventional willingness to pay thresholds.

Following on from this, early this year, the Health Service Executive established an Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Steering Group. The purpose of this project is to improve survival rates for those who suffer an out of hospital cardiac arrest through the development and implementation of an out of hospital cardiac arrest strategy. This work will support the National Ambulance Service (NAS) and Community First Responder Ireland (CFR Ireland) in their commitment to improve clinical outcomes for Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA).

Both the NAS and CFR Ireland are working with other partners to enable a sustainable response to such events.

The HSE National Community First Responder framework for Ireland declared that CFRs offer a valuable and complementary resource to emergency ambulance provision, positively impacts NAS response time and achieves improved survival for OHCA. It demonstrated how the NAS and CFR Ireland intend to consolidate, enhance and implement further CFR schemes over the next five years through a National Community First Responder Framework. Its ambitions over the next few years include increasing the availability of training in CPR in schools, work places and local groups and making Public Access Defibrillators more easily accessible with people knowing how to use them. It also aims to:

- Work in partnership with all relevant organisations (statutory, voluntary, community and private sectors) to increase the availability of Public Access Defibrillators;

- Put in place effective arrangements to ensure that Public Access Defibrillators are mapped, maintained and accessible to the public; and

- Commence a public awareness campaign to increase the level of provision of CFR Schemes in geographical areas of priority.

And so one of the means to help improve outcomes in this area is CFR groups. These are people from local communities who are trained in basic life support and the use of defibrillators that attend a potentially life threatening emergency in their area. They are then able to provide an early intervention in situations such as heart attack or cardiac arrest by providing, among other things, resuscitation and defibrillation.

Cardiac First Responders (CFR) Ireland, launched in 2015, is the national umbrella organisation for Community First Responders Groups. CFR Ireland works with the National Ambulance Service, Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council and the Centre for Emergency Medical Science UCD. Both the NAS and CFR Ireland currently support over 145 Community First Responder schemes throughout Ireland, who train community members to provide emergency care support.

If an emergency 999/112 call for cardiac arrest, choking, chest pain or breathing difficulties is made to the National Ambulance Service in an area where a CFR group is established, the on-duty CFR member gets a text from the National Ambulance Service at the same time that an ambulance is despatched with location and call details. The First Responder then goes straight to the scene and administers initial care (defibrillation if required) until the National Ambulance Service Emergency resources arrive.