Ambulance drivers forced to re-sit driving test
All new ambulances have to meet the standards set down by the European Standardisation Committee. However, after purchasing approximately 75 vehicles, at a cost of €138,000 each, the Ambulance Service discovered that the majority of the country’s 1,000 drivers were not qualified to drive them.
The blunder has led to the new ambulances being “parked up” occasionally, according to SIPTU’s John Duggan, a member of the Irish Ambulance Representative Council.
The old generation of ambulance required a D1 licence. This previously meant the holder had automatic entitlement to drive any ‘C’ category vehicles. However, a change of licensing at European level created a standalone category ‘C’.
The ambulance service only became aware of this change after the new, almost twice as expensive, ambulance arrived last year.
Mr Duggan said a working party which oversaw the introduction of the new ambulance had failed “to consult the troops” before introducing it in January 2004. He said it meant a lot of time was “unnecessarily wasted” in ensuring emergency medical technicians (EMT) in need of a C1 were trained up, which could have been done before the vehicles arrived.
“It’s happening right across the health boards. Where you have a mixture of people with a D1 and a C1 licence, they can come to some arrangement, but if a crew only has a D1 licence, the new ambulance would have to be parked up for that roster,” he said.
The change meant EMTs with a D1 licence would now have to re-sit their driving test for a C1 licence.
Marcartan Hughes, director of the national ambulance training service, said health boards have made arrangements locally to facilitate and finance drivers in re-sitting their tests.
There are approximately 1,000 Health Service Executive EMTs, with more than half estimated to hold the new licence.
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