4 days ago
Calls for Blood Bikes to be given access to bus lanes
Blood Bike volunteers are calling for the ability to use bus lanes and be exempted from road tolls under a new bill that will be debated in the Dáil.
Blood Bikes assist the health service by transporting essential goods for patients, often while the patient is in the operating theatre.
Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh tabled an amendment to the Road Traffic and Roads Bill that would extend exemptions from road tolls and the right to use bus lanes, which currently apply to ambulances, to also cover Blood Bike services.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Blood Bike volunteer, Michael Noonan, said that the current legislation slows down their work.
"As it stands, gardaí have increased their high-profile policing, and they've doubled their fines in the last year on the use of bus lanes," he said.
"While our vehicles are marked, and gardaí are quite good with us in that regard, we use vehicles for palliative care which are unmarked and that just creates delays and complications."
Mr Noonan said Blood Bikes transport medication, scans and medical equipment.
"An ambulance will transfer a patient, anything to do with that patient could be transferred by a bike.
"It could be their scans, it could be their medication, it could be any form of critical information required, it could be medical equipment," he added.
"We often move stuff where people could be in theatre, and they discover that they're short something and may be required to be got from another hospital."
Mr Noonan described the work of Blood Bike volunteers as an "insurance policy for the HSE".
"When a critical call comes in, we can react instantly to their calls and get what they want, and what we do is actually quite incredible and unknown."
The Department of Transport said that it does not support the request for blood bikes to be given permission to use bus lanes.
In a statement, the Department claimed that any addition to the categories of vehicles permitted to use the lanes would inevitably reduce their efficiency for performing their original purpose.
However, Mr Noonan said that there are only six Blood Bike volunteers on duty a day in Dublin and argued that allowing for them to use bus lanes would "have no effect at all".
"There are six vehicles moving around that could lose their license within half an hour, so the bottom line is very simple: the level of vehicles that are required is minimal," he said.
Mr Noonan added: "300,000 a day go across the M50, so from that point of view, it would have no effect whatsoever; the bike doesn't hold up traffic in a bus lane, they're quite discrete."
