No ambulances yet for the mid-west

None of the ambulances needed to service north Tipperary and the Clare/Ennis region are in place, Fine Gael Health spokesperson Deputy James Reilly told the Dáil last week.
“Furthermore, these ambulances are to be supplemented by emergency medical technicians or paramedics, who will be able to give certain drugs at the roadside but who will not be able to administer life-saving blood transfusions,” Dr Reilly said.

“The paramedic will travel in the ambulance with the patient if there’s a serious, life-threatening condition and with the current proposed spread of paramedics, it would not appear that there would be somebody to take up the slack or to drive the paramedic’s car from the scene.”
Patients in both Clare and north Tipperary, who live in areas like Carrigaholt and Lorrha respectively, will be well outside the ‘golden hour’ in terms of accessing the necessary life-saving treatment that has been proven in the past to have a major influence on outcome, Dr Reilly claimed.
Another part of the plan is for a high-dependency unit of 40 beds to be built in the Limerick Regional Hospital. “Again, there is no sign of this, not even planning permission applied for. And indeed, talking to the hospital doctors in Limerick Regional and St John’s, they feel that there is a need for at least another 40 beds to transfer those patients to,” continued Dr Reilly.
There has also been deep concern among the local general practitioners who were unanimously opposed to this at a major meeting with the HSE, the FG spokesperson added. “Not one GP out of 81 at that meeting was prepared to vote in favour of this plan,” Dr Reilly said.
“I am told that 17 people passed the front door of Monaghan Hospital in an ambulance, only to arrive too late at Cavan,” said Dr Reilly. “Will an overcrowded ED at Limerick Regional be a centre of excellence with 54,000 more patients arriving per year from Nenagh and Ennis?
“In the original draft, the cost of this plan was put at €380 million, yet we are told that there is the princely sum of €6 million to make this happen,” said the FG health spokesperson.