Burned out ambulances service 'lives at risk' says Laois representative

Laois people could die because of the problems in the ambulance according to a Laois TD who claims the average wait time in the midlands is now nearly half an hour.

The warning came from Sinn Féin TD for Laois / Offaly Brian Stanley who believes the Government’s failure to support ambulance services and paramedics is putting lives at risk.

He was speaking about a Sinn Féin proposal, in the Dáil that called on the Government to urgently publish a multi-annual capacity and workforce plan to meet the needs of patients. It also calls for improvements in the ability of the National Ambulance Service and Dublin Fire Brigade to save lives.

"Sinn Féin are bringing forward a motion this week that calls on the Government to take urgent action to address the crisis in ambulance response times. 80 percent of life-threatening incidents should be responded to by an ambulance within 19 minutes as per the HSE’s own standards.

"Yet in the Midlands region the average response times for life-threatening callouts has gone from 19 minutes to 29 minutes in the past 3 years. This is putting lives at risk. A serious plan is needed if the Ambulance Service is to reverse the trend and improve outcomes.

“The Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has failed to support our frontline paramedics, and in Budget 2023 Ministers Paschal Donohoe and Michael McGrath chose not to provide the funding needed to reverse the trend in ambulance response times.

"This has led to the burnout of frontline paramedics and has increased risk for patients due to increased response times. Increases in response times are stark and show that the Ambulance Service is under serious strain and pressure, exactly what paramedics have been warning for years,’’ he said.

He said the National Ambulance Service needs more than 3,000 paramedics in the next four years to meet these targets, and they have warned that if these targets are not met, they ‘will have insufficient resources to respond to the projected demand, and as a result, 19-minute performance would be considerably less than 40%’.

 “This is dangerous and is putting people’s lives at risk. Sinn Féin is calling on the government to urgently publish a multi-annual capacity and workforce plan to meet the needs of patients and improve the ability of the National Ambulance Service to save lives,” he said.

The Laois TD said the National Ambulance Service currently has approximately 2,000 paramedics, and their workforce plan lays out a need for 1,300 more paramedics by the end of 2024 and a need to double the staffing composition to more than 4,000 by 2026.