Sinn Féin spokesperson on Health, David Cullinane TD, has called on the Minister for Health to ensure that funding is urgently made available to the National Ambulance Service to protect the specialist emerging threats team and prevent it from being disbanded.

Deputy Cullinane said that this team was put in place as part of improvements learning from the Covid-19 pandemic, and that it was meant to be one of several teams. He noted that only 28 out of the originally planned 160 paramedics are working on these teams.

The TD for Waterford committed to raising the issue with the Minister for Health in the Dáil tomorrow, Wednesday.

Teachta Cullinane said:

“The emerging threats team is an essential specialist service which can react quickly to severe emergencies. Its members are specially trained in handling cases of infectious diseases – whether that is a patient with Covid-19, Monkey Pox, or some other illness which poses a threat to the wider community. They are also highly experienced in responding to emergency situations, and have been deployed following the Creeslough explosion, the Wexford hospital fire, and in extreme weather events.

“This team was established during the pandemic and was a key learning from the Covid-19 response. The ambulance service was not prepared for a major infectious disease outbreak, which is why this was meant to be just one of several teams. They have since been used to manage and transport patients with monkey pox and other infectious diseases who need to be separated from the general population by specialists who know how to protect themselves from the infectious disease.

“The government’s reckless recruitment embargo and underfunding of the health service has devastated the ambulance service’s ability to hire more paramedics and emergency medical technicians, so now the ambulance service wants to pull specialist paramedics away from important work to staff mainstream under-resourced intermediate care and patient transport services. These services need more paramedics, but the NAS should not be forced to cannibalise an essential service.

“The Minister for Health needs to make sure that this team is not disbanded. The ambulance service needs to be resourced to fully staff its core services, recruit and train more paramedics generally, and develop this specialist service further.

“This is not the only ongoing dispute over mismanagement in the ambulance service. There are also serious concerns over the lack of advanced paramedics, unfair taxation preventing the availability of rapid response vehicles for out-of-hours callouts, and serious delays in the new framework agreement on roles and responsibilities which is essential for developing paramedic specialists.

“The ambulance service has a strategic plan, including doubling its workforce, but this has not been funded by government. This is ultimately where the problem lies and the buck stops with the Minister.”