Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 8 October 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health
National Ambulance Service: Discussion
2:00 am
Cathal Byrne (Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context
When the HSE publishes the database of figures and response times, my home county of Wexford and the south east are consistently shown up as having the longest average wait times in the country.
Pre-pandemic, in 2019, the standard response time was 21 minutes, then it went up to 30 minutes and now we are looking at 29 minutes. I have people ringing me regularly right across County Wexford who say they are almost afraid of how long it will take for an ambulance to come to their home, particularly in urgent cases. Given the fact that the figures seem to remain persistently and stubbornly over an average response time of half an hour and that the latest figures show that in Wexford in 2023 there were 850 calls which exceeded the national target of 19 minutes, what is being done to specifically address this?