Grieving parents demand ‘an ambulance in every town’

The heart-broken family of a teenager who died close to his home have pleaded with Leo Varadkar, the new Minister for Health, to ensure there is an ambulance available in every town in Ireland.

Davey and Marguerite Byrne say their son Conor, who would have celebrated his 19th birthday last Saturday should not have had to wait 27 minutes for an ambulance.

“It is a basic human right that when you need help, you get help,” said Ms Byrne at their home in in Marian Park, Dundalk, yesterday. “Wherever they are going to make the cuts, it should not be there, it should not be in the health service. The least we should have got was an ambulance. It could have saved Conor’s life.”

They blame austerity and cutbacks for the lack of an available ambulance when Conor struggled to breathe at lunchtime on June 24.

The HSE confirmed it got the 999 call at 1.12pm and the first ambulance arrived at 1.39pm. The target response time for life-threatening calls is 19 minutes.

The HSE confirmed that “the nearest available emergency ambulance was in the Drogheda area and was immediately dispatched to the scene. All resources in the Dundalk area were engaged on other calls.”

The first emergency service on the scene was Dundalk fire service, which was asked to assist by ambulance control.

“It took the firemen five minutes to clear the town and get here,” said Ms Byrne. “It shouldn’t have had to be like that. As soon as the call was made, two or three minutes would have brought an ambulance here from the Louth County Hospital.

“There has to be at least an emergency ambulance based in every town, for that town and not to be servicing other places.”

Conor, an engineering student, was due to visit his GP the day he died.