AN underspend in the overtime budget of the ambulance service in the West & North West which occurred at the same time people were left waiting for ambulances to arrive to life threatening emergencies has been highlighted by Denis Naughten TD.

The recent RTE Prime Time programme exposed the fact that there are appalling response times for ambulances in the West of Ireland. Only half of ambulances arrive to a life threatening emergency within the target of 19 minutes and only one in five first responders arrive at such incidents – a heart attack, stroke or serious accident – within the target of eight minutes and the North East of the country does not fare much better,” stated Denis Naughten.

“It is a similar story when it comes to the dropping of shifts and, as a result, the loss of an ambulance or emergency vehicle due to staffing shortages.”

In 2013, over 1,200 ambulance shifts were lost throughout the country. This is on top of the scheduled loss of ambulance shifts due to not covering holiday leave or long term sick leave.

“Again the West and North East were to the fore in the loss of such shifts which is putting even greater pressure on an already depleted ambulance resource. This makes it even more bizarre that in the first nine months of 2013 the West, North East & East Coast were the only ambulance areas in the country which underspent on its planned overtime budget,” outlined Denis Naughten.

“This is just not good enough for communities where the ambulance service is presently operating on a knife edge. What is even more disappointing is the fact that when this was pointed out the Minister Reilly in the Dáil earlier today (Wednesday) he failed to even comment on this discrepancy.

“The reality is that while the ambulance service may have world class uniforms, we need more ambulances and the staff to operate them, and we need them now,” concluded Denis Naughten.