Plans to cut ambulance services in Cork and Kerry scrapped

The decision ensures West Cork and Kerry will maintain existing ambulance coverage. File Picture: Chani Anderson

Plans to reduce emergency ambulance cover in West Cork and Kerry have been scrapped after intervention from the Health Minister.

The plans, announced suddenly to the Siptu union last Friday by National Ambulance Service (NAS) management, followed a decision by the HSE to cut funding.

The measures were set to cut services in Castletownbere, Skibbereen, Clonakilty, Mallow, Millstreet, Macroom, Kanturk and Fermoy in Cork, and Tralee, Dingle, Listowel, Killarney, Kenmare and Caherciveen in Kerry.

Union officials were presented with the plans at a meeting on Friday, which Siptu said was supposed to be an opportunity for new representatives and new managers to meet each other.

In a letter sent after the meeting to general manager for NAS (Southwest) Robert Moriarty, Mr Hawkins said what was presented was a “unilateral change” of work practice.

Speaking on Tuesday, Cork South West TD Christopher O’Sullivan said Health Minister Stephen Donnelly had confirmed cuts to ambulance cover would be scrapped after concerns were raised about the impact of potential cuts on the region’s emergency response capacity.

Mr O’Sullivan stressed the importance of maintaining adequate services in such a large rural area.

This is absolutely the right thing to do. Reducing ambulance cover in a huge geographical area like West Cork would have been unacceptable. I’m grateful to the minister for stepping in.

The Health Minister said that ambulance services in west Cork cannot be diminished and that is why the decision was taken to intervene.

Rural areas are highly dependent on the paramedic team's ability to reach them in a timely manner, Mr Donnelly said.

There is a need to cut costs and reduce spend on overtime, Mr Donnelly said, adding that the proposal to reduce emergency ambulance cover in the area was done in good faith.

However, it was decided that the risk to public health by reducing services was too high and the department of health will instead fund the existing gap which it said is a relatively modest amount.

People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Mick Barry said Cork was recently found to be the county with the highest number of high-priority calls to take more than an hour for an ambulance to respond to in the first six months of this year and this was evidence of a need for more services, not fewer.

"It is absolutely mindblowing that a few days after the State was awarded €14bn the HSE [announced] cuts to funding and the NAS are announcing cuts to services. This cut would mean increased workloads to ambulance staff, greater geographical areas to cover and longer response times. That's really bad news for communities."

Mr Barry said the Government should approve the hire of 2,000 new ambulance staff countrywide and a major increase in the ambulance personnel numbers for Cork and Kerry, which currently stand at about 300.

Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns welcomed the u-turn but said this "inexplicable decision should never have been taken". 

"It caused a huge degree of anger and alarm throughout West Cork.

"Anyone who lives in a rural area already knows that ambulance response times are far too long. Instead of taking measures to address that, a conscious decision was taken to make response times even worse," Ms Cairns said. 

"We cannot and will not tolerate cost-saving measures being valued over the lives and health of those living in Cork and Kerry.

"This decision is especially hard to fathom given we have enormous surpluses and a record budget for the health service," she added.

"This shameful decision has now been scrapped, but we need immediate answers from government now on how they propose to improve ambulance services in the region."

Sinn Féin TD for Cork South Central Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire has previously claimed an ambulance took 85 minutes to reach Páirc Uí Rinn on Friday night when a Glenville player was injured during a match between Kinsale and Glenville.

“Eighty five minutes for an ambulance to come is far, far too long," he said.

Unfortunately, we are hearing too many examples of this in Cork and right across the country. The NAS staff are phenomenal but they are stretched to breaking point.

Speaking to RedFM, Brendan Flynn of NAS Representative Association said he had feared the cuts would be felt particularly hard in rural areas.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

"If you take an ambulance out of a rural area, then it has to be compensated by an ambulance coming from elsewhere, which is going to mean that there's going to be a time delay on an ambulance getting to some patients, without a doubt"

The decision ensures West Cork and Kerry will maintain existing ambulance coverage.