Waterford Sinn Féin Councillor Conor D. McGuinness has said the government’s failure to support ambulance services and paramedics is putting lives at risk in Waterford City and County.
The leader of Sinn Féin on Waterford Council has urged support for his party’s motion, due to be debated in the Dáil on Tuesday, which calls 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.
McGuinness said:
“My colleague and Sinn Féin Health spokesperson David Cullinane has brought 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 response times for these categories of incidents averages 33 minutes in the South East region last year, a 12 minute increase on comparable 2019 figures.
“This constitutes a 57% increase in average response times, the second highest for any region in the state. These are averages for the most urgent categories of incidents, and many I’ll and injured patients wait much longer.
“Last week I raised the lack of emergency ambulance cover for West Waterford due to Government failure address the retention and recruitment crisis in the National Ambulance Service,
“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.The 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.
“The National Ambulance Service currently has approximately 2,000 paramedics, and their workforce plan lays out a need for more than 1,300 more paramedics by the end of 2024 and a need to double the staffing composition to more than 4,000 by 2026.
“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.”
Cllr. Conor D. McGuinness 