I raise with the Taoiseach a reply to a parliamentary question I received from the Minister for Health. In the past year and a half, since January 2024, just five paramedics and 12 emergency medical technicians, EMTs, have been hired by the National Ambulance Service. This is despite the fact that a recent report states that there are 1,000 staff shortages. There is a major crisis in the National Ambulance Service. There are qualified people sitting on panels in Mayo and right across the country and they are trained to save lives. Instead of saving lives, they are pouring pints in local pubs.

This is totally wrong. We need to address this issue. We need to recruit these qualified personnel, take them off panels and recruit them to address the staff shortages in the National Ambulance Service.

We keep bandying words about the place, but the expansion of health services in recent years has been exponential. We need to get a sense of perspective in how we describe things. I am not saying there is not challenges but the bottom line is €25 billion is being spent on our health services. The HSE has significant resources. I was involved in setting up the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council 20-odd years ago.

There have been no paramedics hired this year.

What I am saying is that an additional €8 million was provided in 2025 for new service development in terms of an additional 180 posts. The total staff numbers had risen to 2,407 by the end of 2024. That is an increase of 25% or 476 extra-----

Front-line paramedics and EMTs.

-----since the start of 2020. Therefore, we have had close to 500 extra staff over the last number of years. That does not mean we do not need more; we probably do.

Taoiseach, your time is up.

Let us not pretend-----

Front-line paramedics and EMTs. The numbers are there in the reply to the parliamentary question. I can give them to the Taoiseach.