ICRR Air Ambulance Helicopter lands in Cashel Rugby Club

The Irish Community Rapid Response on Land and Sea (ICRR) helicopter paid a visit to Cashel, Tipperary Town and Thurles on Sunday.

The helicopter and crew were on a familiarising tour to raise public awareness before the official roll out of the full daylight hours service, shortly.

This Air Ambulance service is Ireland’s first ever Charity Air service, and on Sunday landed in Cashel Rugby Club, watched by onlookers from the club

It is being run in conjunction with the HSE National Ambulance service and provides dedicated to pre – hospital care.

It expects that its response to an incident will have patients receiving critical medical care in a relatively much shorter time. It will be tasked by the National Ambulance Service and available for missions nationwide, and in particularly to serve the people of Tipperary and the wider South West of Ireland. The Air Amblulance will be located at Rathcoole in North Cork.

This new service will be coordinated with the existing Athlone based Emergency Aeromedical Service. The service is to be funded by community and donor contributions.

It has already a network of over 200 land based volunteer doctors with ten Rapid Response Vehicles successfully in operation, and will now be augmented by the air service which will include medical crew on board.

Our neighbours across the water in Wales also operate an established fleet of four Air Ambulances catering for seriously ill patients or those with severe trauma or attending other medical events in remote areas or accidents and removing all to specialist hospital care. The ICRR service will replicate the Welsh model. The helicopter was captained by John Murray and CEO John Keohane met with a local HSE Ambulance crew and spoke to others gathered about the significance of the service to all communities and the need for theirsupport.