An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-16
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Gareth Scahill (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach

Last week, while I was using public transport, a train I was travelling on between Dublin and Roscommon had a small fire on board and had to stop. Too often we come in here and talk about a service not having done its job, but I want to compliment Irish Rail, the fire service, An Garda Síochána and our ambulance service on their quick response. They came to a remote part of east Roscommon where the train had to stop. We all had to disembark from the train and were transported to the nearest train station but it was reassuring to know that if the incident had been an awful lot worse, the resources and plan would have been in place to address it in a timely and reassuring way.
On a related note, I had a meeting with some representatives of the ambulance service over the Easter break. I would like a further debate in this Chamber on the ambulance service because there is a disparity with the dynamic distribution model of the ambulance service, specifically for counties that do not have emergency departments, such as Monaghan, Carlow, Laois, Leitrim and Roscommon, to name but a few. Ambulance calls are assigned to ambulances rather than ambulance bases and we are leaving a certain cohort of our society at a slight disadvantage when ambulances are called to emergency departments or are dropping people off to emergency departments. People in those counties are left with reduced numbers of units serving their communities when situations like that arise. I would welcome a debate on that matter.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-16