Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 October 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

National Ambulance Service: Discussion

2:00 am

Mr. Robert Morton:

First, every 999 call is clinically triaged. It goes through primary triage. We are looking for the very sick patients, that is, the ones who need to be treated with the highest priority. Resources are dispatched to those. That is done in NEOC. That is where all that activity takes place. There is clinical governance over that. The clinical governance will go back to Mr. O'Donnell but there will be a deputy clinical director who oversees clinical decision-making in NEOC. Ambulances are prioritised. If somebody has to wait, and that often happens, it is the lowest acuity cases that wait for the response. The nearest ambulance is then prioritised by the dispatch function. There are multiple functions in NEOC. That is basically where all of that co-ordination takes place.