Government warned to ‘take heed’ of Connemara ambulance concerns

Anton McNulty

A CONNEMARA ambulance group has called on the HSE and the Government to ‘take heed’ of concerns about the the lack of ambulance cover in the region.
The Connemara Ambulance Crisis Group held a protest in Eyre Square in Galway last Wednesday, and a protest letter was handed into HSE offices in the city. In the letter, the group outlined concerns about the poor ambulance cover for northwest Connemara, where patients have had to wait up to three hours for an ambulance to arrive.
Describing the service as  ‘diabolical’, they claim that they are being discriminated against. They also attacked the notion that the area’s population is too sparse to justify more cover.
“The argument that population is low in Connemara is raised . Whilst population density or sparseness [can] make providing a service more difficult, this is not the point, as we are still taxpayers entitled to a service. We elect representatives and governments to attend to this,” they stated.
The group has met with various Ministers for Health, including the current Taoiseach, and HSE officials since forming in 2014. Nevertheless, the Group’s recommendations for an ambulance to be deployed in the old Leenane Gardaí Barracks has not been taken on board.
“The argument that improvements in Mulranny and Tuam alleviate problems in their own areas is of little consequence to us here, as Castlebar and Galway’s hospitals are in fact nearer to us than Mulranny and Tuam. The case of Mulranny was recently brought up in the DΡil as not contributing much to alleviate anything.
“The Air Ambulance is not a full solution either, [as] there can be difficulties in landing and especially at night. There was a recent case where there was a one-hour-and-forty-minute wait for an ambulance to reach a very serious heart patient before transferring him to the Air Ambulance which was on standby. Waiting – at what cost and what if it was needed elsewhere?”
They also stated that any suggestion of using the local voluntary First Responders as a solution was ‘particularly insulting’.  
“Although the First Responders do a wonderful job, it is not really the job of a volunteer crew to look after the needs of the people living in Connemara, nor is it their responsibility to ensure the provision of an ambulance service for the now hundreds of thousands of people visiting Connemara annually. This is the job of the HSE, the NAS, the government.
“It is way past time they began to listen to us and take heed – instead of listing off the same old, tired, jaded statements that really do not offer anything at all,” the group concluded.