Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-13
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Mary Lou McDonald (SF), Dublin Central

The Taoiseach's response reflects his lack of urgency on this question. He is quite happy to simply take a laissez-faire approach and hope that others will sort this out. He knows that for the past six years, throughout this process of modernisation, ambulance workers have been left understaffed to the point that they have very deep safety concerns. Those concerns are well-grounded. He has left them overworked. So many of them are burned out that there is now an issue around recruitment and retention in that very service. He has also left them underpaid.
Yesterday, those workers were on the picket line. If the Taoiseach maintains the position he has articulated today, we will face next week, the week after and the week after that an escalating crisis in the service. That is not good enough for the workers concerned and it is certainly good enough for the public and the citizens who rely on these workers for a life-saving service.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-13