Ambulance management cannot throw in towel on rural ireland

Roscommon Deputy Denis Naughten has demanded that ambulance service management do not “throw in the towel on rural Ireland on foot of a flawed ambulance capacity review”.

“This report, which seems to base its conclusions on England, is not comparing like with like, and suggests that even with resources, only 64% of emergencies can have a first responder at the scene of the incident within 8 minutes”.

“Yet in Scotland, 74.7% of responses there were within the eight-minute target in 2012-13. In Northern Ireland their target for responses within eight minutes is 72.5%, with a minimum target not less than 65% in any area. Yet this report is stating that we cannot achieve that here”.

He continued: “The fact is that every delayed ambulance, potentially leads to the loss of a life, and geography should not determine if you should live or die”.

“It is also amazing that, even though the ambulance response time figures were highlighted at the time that the Government was closing the smaller A&E departments, we were assured that we would have a “world class” ambulance service”.

“We now find that these communities are to be completely abandoned and the clear policy agenda across all State agencies is to forget rural Ireland, because saving money is now more important than saving communities or lives” concluded Denis Naughten.