Stolen defibrillator found in Louth; One still missing in Wicklow
by By Elaine Keogh- with reporting from Vivienne Clarke
A potentially life-saving defibrillator, that was stolen from outside a shop in Co Louth, has been found.
It was stolen on Friday night from outside the Village Store in Aston Village, Drogheda.
The theft by two young men was captured on CCTV footage that has been given to the gardaí.
Local resident Kenneth Flood confirmed this morning that it had been found.
He said it was discovered "this morning in Redshank Court. It wasn't there yesterday so it was brought back and dumped."
Locals had searched for the device over the weekend. 12 local residents, including staff at the nearby Aston Village Educate Together primary school had been trained as first responders and were able to use it.
Mr Flood, who paid for the device during his time as a councillor, said that the Order of Malta will check the AED to see if it is okay to use.
Over the weekend a funding page was set up to pay for a replacement. However, Mr Flood confirmed this morning that Sinn Féin councillors have agreed to cover the costs of replacing it or repairing it from their community allocation funds.
It was one of two defibrillators stolen over the weekend, the other was taken in Wicklow.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland today, Dr David Menzies - medical director of national Community First Responder network - explained the importance of defibrillators.
“It is a piece of equipment that can deliver an electric shock to a patient’s heart if they are in cardiac arrest," said Dr Menzies.
“Ireland has about 13 of these a day, outside of hospital environments, the chances of survival are completely time dependent, so there's two interventions that are proven to work, one is early CPR and Ireland is really good at that, we have a rate of over 80 per cent bystander CPR which is probably world leading.
“The second intervention is defibrillator and that's really effective within the first 10 minutes. So this is not something that the ambulance service or the health service on its own can solve.
“The cheapest defibrillator is just north of €1,000 plus VAT, they need to be kept in a heated cabinet as cold weather will degrade the battery. You're looking at €1500 for that community to replace this.”
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