Full-time ambulance service needed

The people of Midleton and Youghal are deeply concerned about the nature of future proposals for the HSE ambulance service in the East Cork region and anxiously seek clarification.

The recent very sad and fatal happenings in Midleton and Youghal, should be sufficient evidence to warrant a 24/7 ambulance-based service in both towns.

This is truly a pro-life campaign — one aimed at protecting the lives of our people.

If the HSE get its way, both Midleton and Youghal will have no more than a skeleton ambulance service which would not be even remotely adequate for an area that is broadly rural but with some centres of population, and an area that is earmarked for major industry, we cannot allow our ambulance service be downgraded.

If the HSE were aware of reality, we would not have to deal with the total chaos that our health services find themselves in, at the present time.

Blinded by the rhetoric of best practice and centres of excellence, the public is being asked to roll over and lie down — while ambulance services become seriously disrupted, coupled with up to 23 hospitals, A&Es and maternity units closed, under various guises, such as ‘patient safety’ — a very sad situation but tolerated by successive governments.

We must be prepared to stand up and be counted and fight for the rights of our people, when basic social justice is under attack, as it is now.

It is a campaign which should be supported by all clubs and organisations, church and community leaders, schools and colleges. Parliamentarians should march, unite, and fight together for the safety and protection of human life.

We need a campaign that will see the return of a 24/7 ambulance-based service in Midleton and Youghal. Government cutbacks should be buried — before they bury all of us.

Cllr Noel Collins

Midleton

Co Cork