Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-05-12 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central Again, it was successive Governments that invested and took the policy decisions to change the whole nature of the first responder sector. The Deputy just made a comment that no previous Government ever did anything about this. It is such an outrageous comment to make and there is no reality attached to it at all. However, the Deputy thinks that she come in and just say it and that is grand. How does the Deputy think it happened? How does she think the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council was established? How was the first responder system and the professionalisation of the whole area developed? Yes, all involved were fantastic in going with it and having the ambition to do it but let us not make throwaway statements that no one cared a damn about it until now when the Deputy got up to speak. That is ridiculous. The bottom line is this: genuine negotiations went on between the HSE and the unions. The unions agreed to put the proposals and recommended the proposals, which all of the Opposition Members ignore. They seem to be saying that no matter what is sought, just agree it please. There are always negotiations in situations like this. We want to modernise. We accept it even further. We want to invest more. There is more funding on the table for investment. There has been very significant investment. Now, there are pressures on workers in that sector. Of that there is no doubt. Reforms are important in public expenditure as well. We can always do things better and more efficiently and effectively, but the Deputy seems to be saying for us to forget all about reform. I do not think that is a sustainable position. Neither did the unions, for that matter, and correctly so. Fantastic work is being done on the front line. We affirm it. We want to get this resolved. There is only way to resolve it, and that is through mediation and dialogue. I am confident that it can be resolved, the issues can be netted out and we can get to a conclusion. There have been tremendous strides made, despite what the Deputy has said, in this area in my lifetime, and certainly over the past two decades, because of decisions to change policy and professionalise emergency medical technicians and the entire service. That has been very effective because it complements and supports the acute hospital service. In other words, the first responder is the key person to anyone whose life is in danger or who has been in an accident. We have professionalised the service, and that all of those involved undertook the additional academic work, qualifications and so on is to their credit. No one is disputing that. The State has accepted from day 1 that pay structures need to be modernised. That was the subject matter of a previous engagement at the WRC, which concluded with very significant outcomes. I outlined those earlier. They were significant outcomes, but they fell at the ballot. We need to get this sorted. --- 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/2026-05-12/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-12