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18th September 2012 • Volume 19, Issue 28 • Leader House, North Street, Swords, Co. Dublin. • Tel: 8•400•200 • info@northcountyleader.ie
Dedicated To Saving Lives Perhaps the worst scenario for any paramedic or ambulance crew to encounter is arriving at the scene of an emergency and being just in time to be late. With this appalling situation in mind, a brand new life saving initiative has been set up in Rush and is one that has captured the community spirit of volunteerism and is set to be replicated in towns and villages the length and breadth of the country. Cardiac First Responders is the first of it’s kind in Dublin and is the brainchild of Rush man, Jamie Bollard, who has witnessed at first hand, the devastation that delays in receiving immediate medical attention can have on people. Jamie is an Emergency Medical Technician with St John’s Ambulance and Civil Defence Fire Service. “Rush is one of the most isolated towns in Dublin and it
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By Patrick Finnegan can take 15 to 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive at the scene of an emergency. With cardiac arrest, the patient can be brain dead after six minutes. To put this in perspective, the nearest ambulance service to Rush is in Swords, so there is no possibility of reaching the patient in time,” he said. This prompted Jamie to set up a service that would bridge this time gap and ensure that the patient was attended to in the crucial first six minutes, where possible. As news of the initiative became known, well known businessman and local resident, Jock Jordan, was one of the first to come on board. He is the PRO of the organisation. The County Leader met with both men in Rush and their passion for the venture was very obvious. “I heard about a similar system that worked successfully in Kildare Town and another in Enfield and we are now the only such service operating in Dublin,” said an enthusiastic Jamie. Jordan’s involvement in the initiative was influenced by the death of a great friend of his some years ago. “He was only 40 and he died on his own doorstep. He may have been saved, if such a system had been in operation then. As well as that, I’m a First Aider in my work at One4All, so my decision to join was an easy one,” he said. Similarly, Bollard’s grandmother was revived after a heart attack by her son, who was a paramedic.
Pictured are Jock Jordan, Jamie Bollard and Jason Doherty from Hickeys Pharmacy in Rush, who sponsored the defibrillator shown.
Jamie himself does the training and he explained that the first training session will be held in Rush Community Centre on 22nd September and he is appealing for as many volunteers as possible to come forward. “Our service gives people the best chance of survival and the more equipped we are, and the more volunteers we have, means that our response time comes down all the time, according as we have people fully trained.” There are now 18 volunteers, all from Rush, who use their own cars and respond to call outs. Jamie explained how the system works. “When someone calls 999, the control room passes the message to the HSE. An automatic text will then be sent to the Responder on Call, on a dedicated mobile phone specially for this purpose. This is done simultaneously as the emergency service. All we do is bridge the time gap until the emergency service arrives. We’re hoping to provide
24/7 cover where possible, depending on numbers,” he said. Like all voluntary organisations, First Responders rely on the generosity of the community. At present they have two defibrillators, Continued on page 21
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Skerries Committee’s Plea To Council Management Once again, our marvellous towns and villages have excelled themselves in the national Tidy Towns competition. The glittering results ceremony was held at the Helix Theatre and revealed that the North County continues to one of the tidiest areas in the country. Skerries retained it’s gold medal and took the Dublin Regional Award once again. Malahide also retained it’s gold medal status, while Balbriggan won the Fingal Endeavour Award. However, this sense of
euphoria was tinged with a dose of reality and frustration. Directly after the ceremony finished, members of Skerries Tidy Towns committee, while delighted with their performance, were clearly frustrated at being so close, but yet so far away. They made an impassioned appeal to senior management at the County Council. Committee members, Anne Doyle and Maeve McGann told the County Leader, “We’re thrilled to be only six points behind the overall winner and we are calling on Senior
Management in Fingal County Council to fully back us. We need the place tidy and clean and grass cut and weeding carried out. We have no gripe with council workers, who do a great job and we have an excellent relationship with them. The fact that we are only six points behind, is down to the committee and our brilliant volunteers,” they said. Anne Doyle emphasised that the “Adopt a Beach, Adopt a Patch, the Thursday Club and all who worked together, are who got us to where we are today.”
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