So, there is a greater awareness needed of defibrillators, how to use them, where they're located, and supporting the increased availability of them within our communities, and having them available on the Welsh ambulance service's defibrillator mapping system. I do fully support making life-saving equipment, such as defibrillators, more accessible and having appropriate signage to highlight their locations, and, again, consistency in doing so as well. Of course, these are available not only from commercial organisations, but a range of third sector groups like St John Ambulance, the British Heart Foundation, and a range of other smaller—you know, Welsh Hearts and other charities here in Wales as well.

I'm interested in both the management and the feasibility of having such a system, but I'm open to receiving further information on how we could see such a system working. It's about the practical ability to take forward an entirely reasonable idea. You'll be aware that, last June, I launched the out-of-hospital cardiac arrest plan for Wales—another one of our snappy titles in the world of health and government in general. We're in the early stages of trying to implement that plan and deliver real improvements. And so there's a sub-group of the heart conditions implementation group, and they're overseeing progress against objectives in that plan. So, the return of spontaneous circulation is already being implemented—the pathway is being implemented by the Welsh ambulance service and health boards.

Last month, the Welsh Government helped to arrange an implementation workshop, which I was able to attend for part of as well, to try and generate debate on how we deliver the first three rings in the chain of survival: early recognition, early CPR and early defibrillation. Attendees came from a range of cardiac charities, along with representatives from emergency services, and they listened to speakers talking about implementation in Wales and what we're already doing, as well as learning lessons from Scotland and also international visitors from Seattle as well. The workshop generated some passionate and informed debate. There's something here about how we corral the whole sector together to have that debate together and then agree on some national choices. We want to use the energy and the feedback to further implement and improve the plan that we have, using outcomes from the workshop and drawing on that experience from Scotland as well. I am genuinely happy to learn from other parts of the system within the UK that are the most comparable for us here, of course. Work has commenced to develop a detailed implementation plan to support that collaborative approach to increase the access to CPR training and the use of defibrillators.

In addition, we're also establishing a communications group to take forward awareness-raising aspects. They'll look at the issues of awareness of exposure to defibrillators in our communities— again, that point I made earlier about demystifying the use of them. There has been a welcome and significant increase in the number of publicly-available defibrillators that the ambulance service knows about in the last three years. There's a number of campaigns that have helped to do that: Restart a Heart Day, Shoctober, Defibuary are just some of them. Of course, the last two campaigns that I mentioned have led to nearly 13,000 schoolchildren being taught CPR and defibrillator awareness in October last year. I was happy to meet a range of those people in a number of different settings around Wales as part of it.

I'd actually launched the Be a Defib Hero campaign in February 2015, when I was the then Deputy Minister for health, and life was perhaps not simpler but easier in one respect, at least. But since then we've had an additional 396 defibrillators to have been logged and mapped onto the Welsh ambulance service dispatch system. There are currently 3,254 defibrillators in total on the system, and they do allow call handlers to direct callers to the nearest one and the availability in the event of a cardiac arrest. We've already had stories, as a result of that system, of not just more defibrillators being there but actually of lives being saved because those publicly-available defibrillators have been used. And, of course, ambulance staff and volunteers have been working in their local communities on defibrillator acquisition, placement and CPR, resuscitation, training.

Again, in my own constituency, I attended an event in the old Eastern High School, a former pupil whose own life had been saved by the health service, and she's giving lots back, both in undertaking—she's a physiotherapist and a personal trainer who is undertaking work on pulmonary rehab. She's also raised money, and she's providing a defibrillator for her old school, which is going to be placed in the new school that's just been opened. There should, then, be something available both in the publicly-accessible part of the school that'll be available out of hours, as well as within the other side of the school that is going to be more restricted to in-hours as well. That's a good example of what we know is already taking place in a number of communities around the country.

So, there will need to be time to see the progress that we make with our out-of hospital cardiac arrest plan and to build on the momentum that we do have with stakeholders, charitable organisations, the public sector and, indeed, a range of businesses that are happy to have their defibrillators mapped on that public system. I hope that Members will engage with and promote the Welsh ambulance service's new Defibuary campaign, obviously starting tomorrow, on 1 February, which is easier to say, and the campaign is about raising awareness of early defibrillation and to encourage everyone to find out where their nearest defibrillators are and then to share that on social media.

We do recognise that every one second counts when someone goes into cardiac arrest, so I think all of us will have a shared mission about how we help raise awareness of the importance of early CPR and defibrillation, and, of course, we'll continue to talk about that in this place and to see whether we've made the progress we want to and whether there are other measures that we could take, including—and I know the Member's preference—having a legislative ability to do some of this as well.