Ambulances could relocate to barracks

WEXFORD Ambulance Station could be temporarily relocated to the old garda barracks in Roche’s Road.

The temporarly relocation - for about four months - is necessary because of works to modernise the existing ambulance station in the grounds of Wexford General Hospital.

The ambulance service had earmarked another premises - part of which is still used by council staff and was once occupied by Wexford Chamber, at Whitemill Industrial Estate - but council officials have ruled out sharing space with the ambulance service following an in-house assessment.

Permission was initally granted by a senior council official, but this was subsquently turned down after the council decided that the scale and complexity of the of the operation as proposed by the HSE ‘would be incompatible with the council’s own operations and activities currently taking place at this location.’

‘It is in this context that Wexford County Council is unable to accede to the request from the HSE for the use on our facilities,’ said the council’s communications manager David Minogue, in response to questions from this newspaper.

‘We thought we would get the green light, but they have said no. It would have been one public body next to another,’ said a member of the ambulance service, who asked not to be identified.

‘If anybody would like to give us a home for a few months, we’d like to hear from then. Maybe the county council will have a change of heart.’

In the meantime, the ambulance service is considering using the old garda barracks, once the new garda headquarters is up and running within the next few weeks.

The service has asked the Office of Public Works to sanction the move, which would involve the use of part of the barracks site to locate ambulances and four staff in the house next to the barrack block.

Asked why the move is necessary, advanced paramedic and county councillor Cllr Ger Carthy said the ambulance service had come up with a budget of €100,000 to renovate the ambulance station in the hospital grounds, which was unsuitable for 21st Century operations.

‘Our station was built at a time when there were no female staff and we need both male and female changing rooms and to upgrade our facilities and to allow for skills training,’ he said, thanking the national ambulance service for the funding.

‘We have gone from ambulance drivers in 1990 to paramedics and advanced paramedics and we need to modernise,’ he said.