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ONLY A SIXTH of the ambulances and other medical vehicles purchased by the Health Services Executive in the last 20 months have been put to use, it has emerged.
Data obtained by the Medical Independent’s Ailbhe Jordan shows that while the HSE Ambulance Service acquired 95 vehicles since the beginning of 2010, only 16 had been ’commissioned’, or made ready for public use.
The HSE has spent €23.4m on emergency vehicles between 2007 and 2011, the publication said, with the highest spending coming in 2007 when the executive purchased 67 vehicles for €9.4m. No vehicles were bought in 2009.
A HSE statement explained that its fleet replacement programme operated on a phased basis, in order to spread the cost of each vehicle across a number of years, and also to account for the stages each vehicle had to go through to be made ready for use.
Those processes generally took 18 months, the statement said, which was why vehicles recorded as being purchased in a given year were not commissioned for use until the following year.
The Medical Independent’s data also suggested that 13 vehicles commissioned in 2008 had not yet been put to use, though the HSE’s statement said all vehicles bought by the executive before that time were now in use.
Last month it emerged that three of the nine emergency vehicles bought by Dublin Fire Brigade between 2007 and 2011 had not been commissioned.
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Of course new cars are required. The amount of milage that they’d do would you want to know that there no going to break down if you had to call them.
There are no words
LOL! Unreal! Seeing lots of new Garda cars too. Is it all necessary?
It is possible that there are very fine reasons for the delay in commissioning these vehicles (maybe it does take 18 months to kit out ; maybe there aren’t enough paramedics to drive the vehicles,etc). The problem, for me, is our complete lack of confidence/loss of trust in the HSE organisation that we are bound to assume incompetence as the first reason.
I can easily see a dispute breaking out over the actual numbers to add to the litany of other disputed figures (no of hospital beds ; no of docs and nurses ; amount of docs private practice…..). If an organisation can’t be trusted to disclose facts about the fundamental resources at it’s disposal, I don’t think we can trust it with something as complex as healthcare.
The HSE’s incompetence, mismanagement, wastefulness and lack of accountability beggars belief.
However they are only a product of a corrupt political system
There are certainly not enough Garda vehicles… The fleet has almost ran it’s course.. The majority of guards are driving heaps of junk… So many cars near 300,000km and not a shilling to replace them..
HSE, Highly Suspicious Excuses, come on, if it took 18 months to kit out a new ambulance, not make the damn thing, you’d expect it to look like the Star Ship Enterprise not a regular ambulance. They imply that the inner workings are fitted by them but as far as I understand the ambulances arrive with all this work already done, I’d like to know exactly what work takes 18 months. And who to avoid.
How exactly can we expect our Gardai, Ambulance Service, Firemen etc to function if they don’t have the proper equipment let alone paying them appropriately, proper overtime rates and the like? It must be very dishearting to be trying to do these jobs and know there is all this brand new equipment just waiting to be “kitted out”.
I also would like to know why it takes 18 months to kit out an ambulance.
If I buy a new car, I expect to drive it as soon as it is registered.
You have to wonder Vincent, if the HSE purchased 13 vehicles in 2008 and commissioned them (it invokes images of Mary Hearney and a bottle of champagne saying “I bless this ambulance and all who travel in her”) but none are actually in use yet, by the time they carry their first casualty they could be 4 years old. It just beggars belief, you couldn’t make this up.
Telling stories about the HSE only upsets people. We cannot be any more disappointed with it than we are. Also nobody is held to account and it appears impossible to make efficient.
The HSE are a law upon them selfs.They dont answer to anybody.
AIDAN dont worry from what i hear the cops are just about to run out of money for fuel for the remaining part of the year and have been told that once their cars hit 300000 klms which most are near they are not replacing cars as theres no cash. So you will be glad to know that many areas will then not be covered by a patrol car better get a guard dog :)
this is the same HSE that spent 100k on a trip to South Africa and who let a Sligo hospital dispose of records (directly or indirectly) in a Galway bog? are we surprised? useless
The price tag on these vehicle are about 60% less than Market value when the government buy them so where’s all the money?????????:(
Ok, let’s see if I have this right. The HSE have loads of ambulances they are not using and the Garda will have to stop using their cars at 300,000 Km – Oh God, I can see it coming! Garda Ambulances – an Irish solution to an Irish problem. Maybe the could double up (or should that triple up) as mobile branches of NAMA.
What a waste. Losing money as that stand idle. The Government should be ashamed as well as the HSE.
We might be waiting a while to get universal healthcare if ridiculous things like this are going on..
Invest in plant and resources but don’t make provision for operating them. Seems to be the nutty business model favoured by the HSE. Minister Reilly tells Tallaght Hospital to cease trolleying patients, but apparently there is a shortage of beds and staff. Where are patients to go? Some hospital A&Es have to close early at weekends due to staff shortages. The government’s response is a proposal for new management models. Another offer to the taxpayer of a tow from the Titanic.
thankfully the average ambulance wait here is less dan 10 minutes, as for cop cars I see alot more unmarked cars, but fire brigades throughout the country are still in many places using tenders more dan 10 years old.??
I don’t know what’s more depressing – that the Journal has yet again resorted to churning out non-stories via cut and paste figures, or that most of the comments above are from people who plainly didn’t bother to read the article.
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