Ciarán O'Connor

speaker

145 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 12 May

Ciarán O'Connor’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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Liveline · "I'm actually doing this interview from the back of an ambulance" · 12 May 2026 podcast

What do you make of Matt's suggestion, and Matt has a professional background in this area, but here and in the UK, that the preferred option, the better option is a type of action that impacts admin and hospital management and the management of the ambulance service and the HSE rather than patients?

So you're talking about the Defence Forces and, well, the Gardaí as well.

I mean, they can go down with blue-blue if the need arises, but they don't take to the picket lines.

Yeah.

I mean, what someone might say to that, Frank, is... Sorry, Matt, was that you coming back in?

Sorry, Mark.

My apologies.

Mark?

Frank?

But Frank, sorry, because the point I was going to make when Mark Jim did was that it's true the Defence Forces are not allowed to engage in industrial action, but, you know, we have a recruitment and retention crisis, but we have a recruitment and retention crisis in the Defence Forces because soldiers are paid such pittance.

You know, I mean, it's actually a cautionary tale against applying the same logic to the ambulance service, isn't it?

No, I know, but my point is that the consequence of recognising the Defence Force as an essential service so they can't engage in industrial action is that the state gets away with paying soldiers way below the rate they should be paid.

And we've got a retention and recruitment crisis that if you were to turn around to the ambulance service and say, right, we're going to treat you the same way.

Sure, it's in the state's interest then, financial interest to say, well, those lads can't go on strike, so don't bother listening to their pay demands.

I heard on the news a little bit earlier, Mark,

I heard somebody in the news a little bit earlier, Mark, a representative of one of the unions, when asked specifically by the RTE correspondent, would there be delays today?

And they said, no, there'll be no delays with 46% of the ambulance service ready to go.

I mean, if you say we need three times as many ambulances as we do, we've only got 46% of those that we currently have in operation.

Those numbers don't really add up.

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