Member's statement: Ambulance Service: Action Short of Strike
Member's statement by Mr Timothy Gaston on .
- MLA
- Mr Timothy Gaston
- Party at the time
- Traditional Unionist Voice
- Date
- 1 April 2025
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Ambulance Service: Action Short of Strike
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4876553
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Thank you very much, Principal Deputy Speaker. I will use this opportunity to revisit the tragic circumstances in which the Darragh family have been left following the sudden passing of Willy Darragh on 21 December last year. As I told the House last week, Willy Darragh passed away on the side of the road. His wife rang the Ambulance Service at 7.05 pm and was told that no ambulances were available. She was asked to take Willy to Antrim Area Hospital. During the journey to Antrim, Caroline had to pull over, because Willy's situation had moved from a category 2 heart attack to a category 1 heart attack — he was no longer breathing. Sadly, Willy passed away. The family has every right to believe that the action short of strike being taken in the Ambulance Service through the unions was part of the reason for there being no ambulance available. On that evening, six ambulances were sitting at dispatch stations in the Northern Trust at the time of that first call, and, because of action short of strike, they could not be assigned to a call.
I welcome this morning's release by the Health Minister of a statement to 'The Nolan Show', but I was disappointed that, during last week's debate, he did not take up my point and respond to the Darragh family on some of the personal issues that have been raised regarding the case. Therefore, while Mr Nesbitt is in the Chamber this morning, there are three thoughts that I want to leave with him on action that he and the Ambulance Service could take today to limit the impact on those who desperately need the service when, during the last hour, crews are not assigned. First, I encourage them to assign crews to category 2 calls in the last hour of their shift. Secondly, in that last hour, crews are not even made aware that a category 2 call has come in. I encourage Mr Nesbitt and the Ambulance Service to answer this question: given that the Ambulance Service does not know whether the crews sitting in the station are in a union, why does it not ask them whether they will attend that call? The third thing that I wish to leave with the Minister is this: come on, this has been going on since November 2023. It takes three months to change contracts. Had the contracts been changed to allow an overlap that facilitated staggered shift patterns, Willy would have stood a better chance on 21 December 2024. Those three things could be changed today. Yes, we hear plenty about flow, but these are things that we could do today to ensure that the Darragh family's situation is not repeated for other families throughout Northern Ireland.
463 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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