Understaffing of Ambulance Service putting lives at risk – David Cullinane TD

Sinn Féin spokesperson on Health, David Cullinane TD, has said that communities will continue to be failed if the government does not safely staff and properly fund the National Ambulance Service (NAS).

Teachta Cullinane was speaking ahead of Sinn Féin’s Dáil motion to better support the Ambulance Service and to improve recruitment and retention, which will be debated this evening.

The motion calls on the Government to train and recruit more paramedics and EMTs, including advanced paramedics; to fully resource the NAS’s strategic workforce plan to double the number of paramedics and EMTs working in the State; and to agree with workers on a modern framework on ambulance staff roles and responsibilities with proper recognition of advanced and specialist skills.

The motion also calls on the Government to fund the retention of the Emerging Threats Team, which is a specialist team for responding to serious emergencies that need specialist skills, such as outbreaks of infectious diseases such as Covid-19 or MonkeyPox. This Team was established because the Covid-19 pandemic showed that the NAS was not prepared to manage a major public health emergency, and has not been funded for 2025.

Teachta Cullinane said:

“Paramedics and EMTs are the backbone of our emergency response services. They work tirelessly to save lives, but are rewarded with burnout, being overworked and undersupported.

“It is an indictment of the government’s failure to safely staff and properly fund the Ambulance Service that the HSE has reduced its response time targets since 2020, rather than improve the service to actually meet those targets.

“The Ambulance Service is still missing the 2020 target of 80% of cardiac incidents responded to in under 19 minutes, and is nowhere near responding to 80% of all other life threatening incidents within 19 minutes.

“This continued failure is putting lives at risk. This risk is felt most in our rural communities.

“Despite the need for more paramedics and specialist paramedics, the 2025 HSE Service Plan has no budget to train advanced paramedics this year. The NAS is also not funded to train enough workers to meet their strategic workforce plan, which outlines a need to double the paramedic and EMT workforce.

“On top of this, the Ambulance Service is disbanding the essential Emerging Threats Team because of a lack of funding. This is a scandal that will put more lives at risk. This team is already severely understaffed and was deliberately established because the pandemic showed that the ambulance service was not prepared for major health emergencies.

“At the heart of these disputes is the government’s reckless recruitment embargo and mismanagement of the health service which has devastated the Ambulance Service’s ability to hire and train more paramedics.

“The Minister for Health needs to show leadership, ensure a positive conclusion in talks on roles and responsibilities, fund the training and deployment of specialist paramedics, and fund the retention of the Emerging Threats Unit.

“The Ambulance Service needs to be resourced to fully staff its core services, recruit and train more paramedics, and further develop specialist and advanced practice.”