I raise the issue of road safety, especially in advance of the bank holiday weekend. Fatality statistics are trending in the wrong direction again, which is unfortunate and sad. At the last count, there were already 79 fatalities this year, which is ten more than the same period last year. We know what the reasons are for these things. We know it is driver behaviour, speeding, driving under the influence, being distracted by mobile phones and sometimes weather conditions, but one factor that is never really mentioned is the pre-hospital medical trauma system. Will a functioning pre-hospital trauma system reduce the number of collisions? No, but it would certainly mitigate the downstream consequences and improve viability, survivability and outcomes.

Ireland is fortunate to have two helicopters on station at the moment, one in Cork and one in Athlone. They provide a very good service at paramedic and advanced paramedic level within their scope of practice. Those two services have saved hundreds of lives since they were conceived a number of years ago but Ireland is unusual and an outlier in that we do not have an multidisciplinary medical team on board these helicopters, specifically consultant anaesthetists and consultant emergency medical physicians. We have paramedics and advanced paramedics, but not full multidisciplinary teams. All the international evidence suggests that when a multidisciplinary team is put together, there are far better outcomes. The reason is simple. They would be much more capable of doing advanced interventions at the roadside or at the point of injury. I am talking about intubation, advanced resuscitation and blood transfusion. Wales has six of these helicopter emergency medical system, HEMS, teams. Northern Ireland has two of them but this jurisdiction has none. Would the Taoiseach be prepared to meet a group of consultant physicians, listen to them and hear their arguments for upgrading our pre-trauma helicopter medical service so that we can all work together to reduce the number of fatalities on our roads? If he would be happy with that meeting, on top of it, will he task the HSE to look at the proposal to see whether it is viable and whether we can end the carnage taking place on our motorways and other roads?

I thank Deputy Berry for raising this important issue. I absolutely will take that meeting. We would benefit greatly from that expertise and listening to those individuals. I am happy to do that.

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of road safety as we face into another bank holiday weekend. Everyone needs to be conscious of what are called the killer behaviours that can take place on Irish roads. The Government and I, working with the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, and the Ministers, Deputies Ryan and McEntee, have put particular emphasis on road safety in recent weeks. We have met the Road Safety Authority, RSA, and An Garda Síochána to hear what more they can do urgently to address the issue. Following that meeting, we agreed a number of immediate measures that could be put in place, including further public awareness campaigns and increased expenditure on them, which people want and expect to see more of on their TV screens and hear on their radio stations, increasing public awareness of enforcement plans by An Garda Síochána, steps to resolve the suspension of data sharing between the RSA and local authorities and investment to deliver safety improvements on our roads. I also convened and chaired a meeting of the Government's ministerial road safety committee to ensure early progress on these issues and other responses to the recent increase in road deaths. This is in addition to the Road Traffic Bill 2024 brought forward by the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, which was passed by the Dáil on 6 March and the Seanad on 11 April and is due to be signed into law shortly. The Bill deals with a number of issues.

As the Deputy said, aeromedical services are a highly effective means of reaching patients in remote areas and in vital situations where road ambulances would be incapable of achieving an effective or a timely response. I am very aware of the calls for multidisciplinary teams on board. This has been raised on a number of occasions.

It is important to say that in terms of consultant-led HEMS response, the HSE National Ambulance Service, NAS, provides two consultant-led HEMS responses in Ireland, both of which the Deputy mentioned, with additional aeromedical support from the Irish Coastguard. Both HEMS responses provide fast access to life-saving pre-hospital emergency care interventions at the scene by highly-trained advanced paramedics. The focus on HEMS in Ireland is on providing rapid access for patients to the most appropriate clinical care but this is an area in which we should seek to do more. We should examine our responses and we should be willing to listen to new ideas. I am, therefore, very pleased to inform the Deputy that the HSE’s NAS is now about to commence a feasibility study of physicians crewing on the NAS HEMS aircraft next month with the trial expected to last around four months. This trial will see the NAS affiliated emergency medicine consultants with considerable experience in pre-hospital emergency medicine undertaking a number of rotations per week on each of the HEMS aircraft alongside advanced paramedics. The NAS will then evaluate the information gathered from the trial to determine the clinical competencies best suited for the HEMS service and how best to deploy these in the future to support optimal clinical outcomes for patients. I very much look forward to taking that meeting and hope that this trial gives us some good information.

That is better than I was expecting; I thank the Taoiseach for the response. I also thank him for agreeing to meet the physicians. The feasibility study is a very positive development.

Reducing the number of fatalities on our roads would be a sufficient reason for this system but I see my constituency colleague the Minister of State, Deputy Heydon, across the Chamber and am minded that this is not just about roads. From a farming perspective, there are many trauma incidents with machinery on farms and also on building sites all across rural Ireland. Therefore it is not just confined to our roads. We need to get this system up and running as soon as possible. I urge the Taoiseach to move towards implementation as soon as the feasibility study is complete.

I am conscious that I am sitting beside a colleague and a friend, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, who knows all too well how that life-saving service made a massive difference to her own daughter, Tara’s life. This is a service that everyone in Ireland really values. It does absolutely incredible work. We live in a country that is small in geographic size but is in someway vast in terms of the remote ways in which our emergency services endeavour to respond to people in real time at a time we know both response times and the clinical competencies at the scene can make an absolutely incredible difference to the clinical outcomes and, indeed, the life of an individual. I am really pleased that this is an issue that is being taken very seriously by the health service and NAS. I am really encouraged, on foot of inquiring into this, to find out about this new feasibility study where physicians will be crewing the HEMS aircraft from next month for four months and there will be rotation and an opportunity to learn from that. It is not just a trial to see if there is benefit to doing this but more specifically to identify the clinical competencies going forward. I look forward to taking the meeting with the physicians and thank them for reaching out.