Mr. Robert Morton:

On average every day we do experience a number of patients who will wait over an hour for an ambulance. There is small number every day who will wait over two hours. That happens every day without fail. That is the average. Within that space they are very small numbers, bearing in mind we respond to about 1,000 999 calls every day, or sometimes up to 1,200 calls every day, but within that small cohort of patients is where the potential for harm exists. Internally we have a safety-netting process in our clinical hub where we have doctors, nurses, and now specialist paramedics, who can look and revisit those calls and re-contact those patients to check on them. If necessary, we can re-prioritise those patients and they will go up the queue of calls waiting to be responded to. There is a robust safety-netting process in place. In an ideal world, as my colleague Mr. Healy has touched on, part of the strategic health investment plan we are aiming to develop is to try to secure more resources so we can focus not just on improving response times but also on reducing the long waits. That is the first thing. We want to improve the safety of these small numbers of patients overall. That is our principal focus at the moment. As we get more investment each year, we will focus on more staff. We have a very clear view on where those staff need to go.