THE AMBULANCE SERVICE in East Cork will be discussed at the Midleton Town Council meeting today, when a councillor puts forward an emergency motion demanding an inquiry into a young boy’s death.
Two-year-old Vakaris Martinaitis was injured after falling from a window at his home in Midleton last week. He had to be brought to hospital by car as Kevin Hennessy, the local man who drove him, had been told there was no ambulance available at that time.
The HSE has now begun a full investigation into the incident. The director of the National Ambulance Service has commissioned a formal incident review into the manner in which the 999 call received from Midleton at 2pm on Monday 6 May was managed.
Local Sinn Féin councillor Pat Buckley will bring the motion forward at the meeting when it takes place this evening. The emergency motion calls for a full inquiry into Martinaitis’s death, while Cllr Buckley is also calling for the HSE to put the ambulance base back into Midleton, from where it was moved.
He told TheJournal.ie there was a lot of anger in Midleton following the news of the young boy’s death.
Yesterday morning, a protest took place outside the office of local TD David Stanton. The locals were protesting at what they describe as the “lack of proper ambulance cover for the town and East Cork as a whole”, Cllr Buckley said.
Deputy Stanton is to submit the issue of the ambulance service in East Cork, including Midleton, to be discussed during topical issues in the Dáil today. It is understood he would like the reorganisation of the service in that area to be discussed, as well as last week’s tragedy.
The NAS said that the reorganisation of the ambulance service in the region “has seen an approximate increase of 11 per cent in rostered man hours in the area over the last 12 months”.
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