Reilly and Kenny closed our A&E here in Roscommon in July 2011 on false figures and lies saying the HIQA recommended the closure Well we now know it was all lies We now have approx 2 hours of a journey to the nearest A&E DEPT so I live the nightmare of these medieval cuts and wish you all the best in your fight for what we are all entitled to as human beings If we treat a dog as bad we would be classed as criminals so I put Reilly up there as an abuser of the sick

How many ambulances/hospital beds/sna’s/Garda/teachers /nurses and pyrite homes would that fix???

In total, it would finance €70 billion (10 years worth of those services you mention).

But we also need people like Quinn and his spawn to face up to what they did.

Mr. Tarasov,

It was Brian Lenihan who guaranteed the Banks. The Banks could’ve been allowed fail like in Iceland.

@ Quinn shoe-shine boy Mark Dalt

That is true. But Quinn still needs to be accountable for what he’s done. End of.

@Mark
Leaving Lenihan and the bank guarantee out of it, the insurance buying public would still be caught for a bill of almost €1bn through the ICF because of Quinn’s greed!

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/1010/729m-paid-into-insurance-fund-to-cover-quinn-business.html

The Insurance companies should also have been allowed to fail and restructure themselves. Again, the state propped them up by imposing a levy. This is the problem with Ireland: Right-wing governments are elected time after time and they cannot govern without screwing up. The real alternatives are staring at you in the face.

There is no left alternative in Ireland. People are still along way from trusting SF fully. ULA are proving themselves to be as corrupt as the right and they don’t even have any power.

A little off topic here, but the ICF is not there to prop up insurance companies, it is to ensure that genuine claims are still paid following the collapse of an insurance company.

Some of these claims can come in years later (especially in the case of professional indemnity insurance, which QI disastrously got involved in).

The problem with QI was that it was effectively being operated as a vast pyramid scheme, where current premiums were needed to pay past claims. Of course like all pyramid schemes it was destined to crash somewhere down the line, a point not lost on the financial regulator.

But apparently lost on all the Quinn fanboys…

Cutting ambulances has nothing to do with the Quinns. It has everything to do with the banks however. We have sunk €65bn into our banks at the insistence of the ECB to save other EU banks from contagion. How about saving our people from dying?

North Kildare was the first rural area to be affected by a one day cut. We have a petition started online and in the local shops. We don’t intend to let this government away with this

It doesn’t take a genius to know that cutting an ambulance will result in death. Fine Gael’s Minister for Health may be happy to play Russian Roulette with our lives but we are not.

Best of luck to the West Cork Campaign.

EVERYBODY OUT ON THE STREETS. UNITE AGAINST ONE COMMON ENEMY: THE GOVERNMENT’S PAYMENT OF BONDHOLDERS.

An AP in a rapid response car is a welcome asset which is an important element in the overall pre-hospital care system, but it can never replace a land ambulance.

When the idea was first brought up it was generally acknowledged that it needed to be an additional resource to work hand in hand with an ambulance, and should never replace the ambulance. Many patients still need immediate/urgent transport to hospital for definitive care, regardless of any AP intervention.

Unfortunately it has been used as a justification to cut ambulances in recent years, west Cork being a good case in point.

Mattoid, I actually do agree completely.. Something definitely needs to change, and they’re not going to magic up the money to have rostered only ambulance crews for 4 full time ambulances unfortunately. Paramedics on 24 hour shifts are no good to anyone with no rest.

But of course, transport i.e. a full ambulance would be the most desirable!

We In west Cork are very aware of ALL the details Alan, yes there will be a rapid response vehicle to REPLACE the patient carrying vehicle, but that is not acceptable, as the RR cannot carry a patient to hospital, (a minimum of 1.2 hours away) we very much welcome the RR but along side existing ambulance not as a replacement, West cork will have 3 patient carrying vehicles, a rapid response vehicle and a transfer ambulance from 8am-8pm however will only have 2 patient carrying vehicles, and RR after 8pm, that is a difference of 2 vehicles, one being a vital patient carrying vehicle to transport to hospital, there is no way, no matter how you look at it, ( believe me when i tell you we have spent over a year going over the details with a fine toothed comb) they can meet HIQA standards and guarantee the upmost safety of the people

Hi Alan,

The esponse car was brought in to keep the switch from ‘on call’ to proper shifts for the paramedics. BTW, the HSE has been delaying putting the paramedics on shifts for over 6 years now and this is being brought in only because the labour court rulled that the on-call system was no longer acceptable.

In regards to the response vehicle, it is only crewed by one paramedic. When you say “just without the capacity to transport”, how will the the NAS achieve their goal of having a patient carrying vehicle on the scene for life threatening situations within 19 minutes (their standard to achieve) with one less casualty carrying vehicle on the road.

I would also like to know how it is the Skibbereen ambulance has been chosen? It has the 2nd highest actual 999 call out in west Cork after Clonakilty.

We all agree that the on call system has to go, but the response car was not brought in order to increase service to the people but to make the switch over to shift work cost neutral. This is a result of a decision between the labour court, the HSE and the unions to keep in cost neutral.

How could one car with one paramedic who cannot bring you to the hospital be better than 2 paramedics in an ambulance who can bring you to the hospital? The HSE and the NAS also state that some patients can be treated on the scene before transport but what is wrong with treating them in the back of the ambulance (instead of a puddle) on the way to the hospital.

The HSE and the NAS are removing ambulances and replacing them with cars in order to save money and not to improve the service and to save lives. Why do they not provide the cars to act in support of existing services.

They also claim that they are not removing ambulances from stations. This technically is true, but they are leaving them parked in stations over night and repalcing them with cars.