Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-01-20 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central There has been recruitment. An 25% increase in staff is a significant increase by any yardstick. The National Ambulance Service is also saying that it is developing alternative care pathways, which are important. It is in the process of reforming and expanding such pathways, which would include clinical capacity in terms of community paramedics deployed nationwide, clinical hubs and so forth. That would mean more appropriate treatment at the right level. That is something that clearly has to be worked on and further reforms need to be looked at with regard to the extent and nature of the coverage because the increase in urgent cases that the ambulance service is dealing with on an annual basis is quite significant. It will increase annually by a significant amount, therefore, resources have to be allocated. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-20/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-20