Matt Reid

I don't support the industrial action today as it is being taken.

I am at the border of industrial action with the views in the right context and used to good effect.

My background, my first career was as a medic.

I was a sick bay attendant in the Irish Naval Service.

I worked closely with our colleagues in the Army Medical Corps.

I worked on the original cardiac ambulance out of Stalorban, some of your listeners may remember, before the HSE took it over.

And I've been around that block.

And then later in my career, I was a coast watch officer with Her Majesty's Coast Guard, working in a control room environment.

for a 999 service.

At that time, we were in dispute with our employers over pay and conditions and qualifications, similar to what the people in the HSE are facing at the moment.

And we considered taking industrial action.

We sat down, we thought about it.

We decided that any industrial action we would take would not degrade

or deny our vulnerable service users from any service, and our industrial action was administrative in nature.

Not filing reports, not co-operating with management, that kind of stuff.

But never did we pull back from delivering a life-saving service to our clientele.

My job was to initiate and coordinate search and rescue missions using helicopters, lightboats, coastal rescue teams, ambulance crews, fire engines,

All that kind of stuff.

I did that for five years.

And all of those years we were in dispute with our employers.