Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Tóibín for the question. We must endeavour to do everything we can to make sure the responses are properly triaged and then the response times are such that where they really do need to be there very quickly this is achieved.

I acknowledge the commitment of the national ambulance service and all of those working in it to delivering this on behalf of patients. We have invested more than €219 million in the National Ambulance Service since 2019. It represents a €50 million increase. It is has been a very significant investment to ensure we have the best possible ambulance service. The increase in staff has been important. If we look back to 2015, over the past eight years the number of staff has increased by more than one third. We have 600 more people working in the service than we had in 2015. To be clear, just last year 228 of those were added. There was a big increase in the number of people working in the national ambulance service last year. The majority of those were hired late in the year.

On the Deputy's points specifically on the response times, which I fully appreciate, the Deputy will be aware of the ECHO and the DELTA response times and the targets. The target for the ECHO calls, which includes cardiac, is 75% within the time period. To November of last year they were at about 73%, which is 2% off the target. The DELTA calls had a target of 45%. They were at 44.5%, so nearly there. They are not yet hitting those targets. I interrogated this matter further on the back of the question submitted by the Deputy. The good news is that the majority of those several 100 extra staff were hired very late last year and so the benefit of those extra staff for increased response times will not have been seen in the 2023 figures. We have, therefore, an ambition this year not just to meet the response time targets but to exceed them.

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