A FORMER TIPPERARY senior hurling captain has said that compulsory CPR training should be a part of the PE curriculum in secondary schools.

The calls from Ger ‘Redser’ O’Grady come after he may have saved a man’s life by performing CPR on him in Thurles last Friday.

The man had gone into cardiac arrest at a petrol station in the town and O’Grady and his Thurles Sarsfields club colleague Gary Loughnane rushed to his aid.

O’Grady told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland today that he had recently heard of an incident where a man had CPR performed on him in a gym, and was thinking of how he was trained in administering CPR but hoped he would never have to use his training.

“I was just saying in my own mind if it did ever come across I’d keep cool.

“And lo and behold a couple of days later, what happened? A fella drops down and has a heart attack in front of my eyes.

So I kept cool got out of the van ran over and started the CPR straight away.

O’Grady said he took turns with his clubmate performing the CPR until the ambulance arrived.

“It’s tough going, but look, but when his life is in your hands, you will stay going. We took turns and then the ambulance came,” he said.

What you are really doing is buying time for the ambulance to come, trying to get blood flow into the brain and into the heart.

He said he hoped that the man would recover but that he was still in hospital in a serious condition.

O’Grady said that should PE become a Leaving Cert subject, CPR training should be “top of the agenda”.

“Every student should have to learn CPR. There’s Tom hanging on for his life with a bit of luck. He was lucky we were in the right place, at the right time,” he said.

“About 10,000 people die in Ireland every year of cardiac arrest.

Out of that 10,000, 5,000 die outside of hospital.