IT was reported in the city this week that, at a match in Páirc Uí Rinn in Ballinlough that when an ambulance was called for an injured player, it took one hour and 20 minutes to arrive.
This is despite the fact that there is an ambulance base within 10 minutes of the pitch.
Luckily for the injured party, there were also medics on hand to keep an eye on the player in the meantime.
But if it takes that long to get access to an emergency ambulance in the city, it doesn’t bear thinking about what might happen in West Cork in a similar situation.
And West Cork is the focus of our own report this week, following the news that – eerily – on Friday 13th several cuts to the local ambulance service were announced.
Namely, that there would be no day cover in Skibbereen on Mondays; no day cover in Castletownbere on Tuesdays; no day cover in Clonakilty on Thursdays; no day cover in Bantry on Thursdays and every second Wednesdays, and no night cover in Bantry on Tuesdays.
It was a shocking decision by our national ambulance service (NAS) at a time when the country is already in the grip of a hospital crisis.
We all know the poor outcomes in our hospitals when already stretched services are further eroded. We are hearing it in the results of numerous HSE ‘reviews’ and ‘reports’ every day.
Local TD Holly Cairns predicted that the cuts could cause deaths, and said funding was being prioritised over peoples’ lives. It’s hard to argue with that when we are already hearing horrendous personal stories of lives being put at risk – or worse, cut short – due to delays in ambulances reaching their destinations.
To add to that a definite shutdown of several services for several days and nights of the week in one of the most remote parts of the country, and one would shudder to think of the consequences.
Do the people in NAS management realise that it is 74 (120km) miles to drive from Dursey to the gates of CUH? If the injured party is lucky enough to have an ambulance come from Bantry, then it has just 32 miles (51km) to travel to get to them.
Government TD Christopher O’Sullivan was quick to announce a solution – he said on Tuesday that the plans to reduce West Cork emergency ambulance cover would be scrapped ‘following direct intervention from Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly’.
This move leaves the observer with so many questions – how could such a serious decision be overturned so quickly? Was the Minister ever aware of the plan? If so, why not? If he was, why was he overturning it so quickly?
Deputy O’Sullivan issued a press release that said he was grateful to the Minister ‘for ensuring that our communities will continue to have access to critical emergency services.’
But the ambulance service staff have been complaining for months that the existing cover was already inadequate – so that is hardly proper access to critical services, surely?
Staffing levels were not adequate to cover the areas long before the latest crazy decision to cut services was made. Are the public to feel grateful that the latest cuts were u-turned?
Does that mean that complaints about the existing poor level of cover would now appear ungracious?
Minister Donnelly’s intervention to ‘save’ the ambulance service – or at least halt the latest cruel cuts to what was left of the vital resource – came very swiftly.
Did someone mention the words ‘general election’?
