FIRE AND rescue services in four midland counties will no longer be providing ambulance cover for the Health Service Executive (HSE) because there is no budget for it.
The HSE has confirmed that local authorities in the Midland region, which covers Westmeath, Longford, Laois and Offaly, have been looking for payment for assisting hospital ambulance crews for "non statutory" duties.
In a memo seen by The Irish Times, the chief ambulance officer for the Midland division, Robert Morton, said fire and rescue services were seeking full costs of the crew call-out plus 33 per cent for overhead costs.
"The National Ambulance Service is not funded for such charges and therefore must discontinue any requests for such assistance," he said.
The memo stated that requests for payments have been made for first response to cardiac arrest, assistance with patient moving and handling, and first responder assistance enroute to hospital.
The changes became apparent when no local authority fire and rescue ambulance turned up to a multiple car collision last month outside Athlone.
The mayor of Athlone, Sinn Féin councillor Paul Hogan, said he only discovered the changes had been made when he inquired about why no ambulance had been sent from Athlone Fire and Rescue.
Cllr Hogan said he had asked Dave Stuart, the chief fire officer of Westmeath County Council, to explain at the next council meeting why the decision was taken without consulting local councillors.
The fire services have said the changes were necessary to make it more efficient. Fire ambulances often respond automatically to calls which could be handled by the ambulance service and the changes have been made to avoid duplication.
Fire ambulances still have a statutory obligation to turn up for duties which include all fires and road traffic accidents where specialist equipment is needed to cut injured passengers out of the car.
The money saved from the new protocol will be used instead to promote fire safety in schools, in the community and to carry out more risk assessments on buildings such as nursing homes, hotels and hospitals, Mr Stuart has said.
Cllr Hogan said the decision by the chief fire officers in the region could have serious consequences for public safety.
"If an ambulance is called to a road traffic accident in Moate, it would normally take a fire ambulance 20 minutes to get there from Athlone which they would have done automatically in the past.
"But, if somebody is trapped in the car, the HSE ambulance will have to go there and ascertain whether a fire ambulance is needed to cut somebody out of a car and that adds another 20 minutes and that can be a critical factor in the 'golden hour' after a road accident when you are trying to save somebody's life," he said.
Chief fire officer Dave Stuart said the decision was taken after a review of the day-to-day workings of the service, and fire crews within the Midland region were among the few countrywide who turned out automatically to a request from ambulance control.
He said: "It is only recently we have the information that allowed us to make that decision. We won't be going to incidents that we are not needed at and clearly this is an improvement,
"The public at large and the elected members would say that this is the right thing to do. We don't need to be wasting money."
A HSE spokeswoman said the issue relating to fire service ambulances only pertained to the midlands and not to the rest of the country.
She said there was no patient safety issue involved.
