Ms Laverne McGuinness:

That information will become available when we have the full capacity review. The information available to the joint committee is the executive summary, which is what I also have. The committee will be able to view the full report when it becomes available. I wanted to provide the information available to us at this time.

We met representatives of the Health Information and Quality Authority on the day before the report was published. As members will be aware, in 2010 HIQA set a target of achieving the eight minute response time in 75% of cases. This is no longer a requirement. Based on the information available, we must set a response time - a stretched target of what is achievable - for categories of minor urban and rural areas and towns and put in place a stretched trajectory for continuing to improve over a specific period. It is now recognised that the 75% target may not be achievable in particular rural areas.

Another objective of the capacity review was to identify what resources might be needed to make the target more achievable. The HSE recognises that the service is not as good as it should be in respect of community first responders, of which only 105 are in place. We met representatives of Community First Responders Ireland with a view to widening the scope of first responders. The capacity review will inform us on where best we should target community first responder schemes. This information will become available at the end of December, at which point we will put in place an implementation plan.

The HSE intends to publish the information on the target of seven minutes and 59 seconds. However, we need to be able to separate the statistics from rural and urban areas and set a target that is deliverable and achievable because it will not be possible to achieve a 75% target with current resources.