‘If it happened me again I’m not sure there would be an ambulance’

A meeting of Athlone Moate Municipal District was told this week that two ambulances which are based in Athlone were deployed to Wicklow and Limerick to respond to emergency calls during a single shift last week.

The claim was made by Cllr John Dolan, who said the local ambulance service “spends the whole bloody night driving around the country from place to place instead of picking up calls” and added that the morning seems to be the best time to have a medical emergency in the Midlands because patients have “some hope” of being able to get access to an ambulance.

“I was lucky enough to have an ambulance with me in 11 minutes when I had my own medical emergency some years ago and that quick response undoubtedly saved my life, but if the same thing happened me again I'm not sure there would be an ambulance available,” said Cllr Dolan.

Cllr Dolan made his remarks during a detailed presentation to the April meeting of the municipal district on Monday by David Clarke from the National Ambulance Service (NAS) who was joined by Ambulance Operations Resource Manager for Athlone and Longford, Martina Bannon.

Outlining the scenario that unfolded one night last week, Cllr Dolan said one of the two ambulances based in Athlone was initially called out to a medical emergency in Tyrrellspass. “From there they were sent to Portlaoise, Athy, Tullow, Carlow and then over the Wicklow mountains to Baltinglass, and the second ambulance was sent as far as Limerick on the same night,” he claimed.

“Paramedics are suffering from burnout,” said Cllr Dolan, who told his council colleagues how he had recently met a paramedic who had driven 670km in one night. “If someone makes a 999 call all they want to know is that an ambulance will be with them in a reasonable time,” he said.

David Clarke, who is in charge of Integrated Service Operations (East), conceded that one of the challenges facing the National Ambulance Service is in the areas of recruitment and retention of staff, and he added that the response times to emergency calls in Athlone and the Midlands generally “are not where we need to be yet” and that more resources are needed.

Mr Clarke refuted the claims made by Cllr Dolan about ambulances driving all over the country every night, and said all calls to the NAS are dealt with by a computerised system which “picks up the ambulance closest to where the call originates from” which could result in ambulances serving an area which is much greater than just their own local area. “The system we use is international best practice and there are many examples of where the computerised system has saved countless thousands of lives,” he said.

The NAS representative told this week's meeting that the plans for a new ambulance base in Athlone are now “at the design stage” but he sounded a note of caution in relation to the site for the new facility – which is to be located adjacent to the Primary Care Centre in Clonbrusk – by saying that they are currently exploring “whether or not the current site is big enough for our needs.”