Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Our health service is in crisis, our hospitals are under pressure and our staff who are working in the ambulance service are under severe pressure. We commend the work they do but they need support. We need the capacity in the plan for the Government. I thank the Dundalk Democratfor dealing with this issue:

As many as 163 ambulances dispatched to non-cardiac life-threatening emergencies in Louth in 2022, took longer than one hour to get to a patient, shocking new figures have revealed. The figures are almost four times the number of calls which took longer than an hour to respond to in 2021. National Ambulance Service guidelines state that an ambulance should aim to arrive at the scene of an emergency non-cardiac incident within 19 minutes. However, 163 patients were forced to wait longer than an hour for an ambulance to arrive last year, according to information released to the Dundalk Democratunder the Freedom of Information Act. The longest wait time for a non-cardiac life threatening incident in Louth in 2022 was four hours and 50 minutes, with ‘Volume of Work’ given as the reason for the lengthy delay. Life threatening calls are split into two categories: Delta/Red (non-cardiac or respiratory arrest life threatening calls) and Echo/purple (life threatening calls relating to cardiac or respiratory arrest). In total, 111 Delta ambulance calls were logged as taking over one hour to arrive at their destination due to the ‘Volume of Work’; 37 were delayed due to ‘Distance Involved’; ‘Other’ was logged as the reason for delay in eight calls; while four cases which took over an hour were logged as ‘Slow Crew Mobilisation’; with two further delays logged as ‘Difficulty Finding Location’; and the remaining case logged as ‘Slow rate of Response By Crew.’

I will detail the overall figures, as cited in the Dundalk Democrat:

62 people experienced a response time in excess of 60 minutes and less than 75 minutes. 40 experienced a response time in excess of 75 minutes and less than 90 minutes. 17 experienced a response time in excess of 90 minutes and less than 105 minutes. 13 experienced a response time in excess of 105 minutes and less than two hours. 31 experienced a response time in excess of two hours.

I will leave it at that. The Minister has gone into some explanation of the improvements that have been made. There would want to be a hell of a lot of improvements to ensure next year's figures are not the same or worse.

See this speech in context