I am seriously concerned about the ambulance service in west Cork. West Cork has four ambulances assigned to the area. One is in Castletownbere but is in Kerry all of the time, one is in Clonakilty and is dubbed the Cork city ambulance and two more are in the Bantry area but spend almost every day in every part of County Cork except west Cork, pushing great ambulance staff to the limit. In the past number of weeks, a man in Castletownbere was hit by a car and was left for two hours and 45 minutes on the roadside as no ambulance was available in west Cork. Three young men were involved in a car accident outside Schull and were waiting two and a half hours for an ambulance while a person in Skibbereen died while waiting for an ambulance for a lengthy period. A woman who suffered a suspected stroke on an island near Schull waited for two hours for an ambulance. Last Friday, a child in a school north of Bantry fell seriously ill. When the ambulance service was contacted, it advised the parents to take the child to Cork University Hospital in the back of the car. The parents drove frantically but when they got as far as Coppeen, they thought the child was dead. Eventually an ambulance caught up with them in Coppeen. I ask the Taoiseach to personally intervene on behalf of the people of west Cork and demand that the ambulances based in west Cork are deployed in that area.

We have a National Ambulance Service which works on a national basis and to national protocols. The service has been modernised dramatically over the past 20 years.

There is no service now in most places.

When I was Minister for Health I established the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council, PHECC, which brought in the professionalisation of first responders and emergency medical technicians. That transformed the whole area. I will engage with the National Ambulance Service in respect of the issues that Deputy Collins just raised but we cannot say we need a service for west Cork or east Kerry or wherever else. We have a national framework that governs first responder provision, ambulance provision and so on and that has been the case for quite some time. However, the Deputy has referred to a number of cases and I will ask for a detailed report in respect of the issues raised.