Robbie Gallagher (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is very welcome to the Chamber. Unfortunately, I am again raising the issue of ambulance delays which, sadly, has become a perennial issue. Ambulance and emergency responses are critical to the survival of many patients. Therefore, initiatives to solve the problem, or at the very least alleviate it, are crucial. In recent years communities have fundraised to purchase defibrillators and people in those communities have spent many hours training themselves to use them. I am sure the Minister of State will join me in offering our great gratitude to them for the work they do. They are doing all they can, but ultimately many emergencies require professional first responders to arrive quickly and deliver patients to the appropriate hospital setting urgently.

The Minister of State can imagine the concern caused when it took five hours and 14 minutes for an ambulance to arrive to the location of an emergency call in Monaghan last year. The Minister of State can imagine the scene for the patient concerned and for those around him. That experience caused stress and trauma. This wait time for an ambulance is not the worst. It represents the 15th longest wait in the country during 2022. The longest wait in Cavan was for four hours and 59 minutes. A total of 155 people waited more than an hour for an ambulance in Cavan and Monaghan during 2022. The HSE states that it aims to respond to life-threatening heart and respiratory calls within 19 minutes in 80% of cases. Other life-threatening emergencies should be responded to within the same timeframe in 50% of cases. However, according to a recent freedom of information request, the longest wait was seven hours and ten minutes in Waterford. A total of 233 response times were more than three hours.

Everyone knows that lives will be lost if drastic changes are not made to improve the response times of the National Ambulance Service, NAS. Figures have also revealed that the percentage of calls over life-threatening heart and respiratory matters responded to within the target time of 19 minutes has fallen from 75% in December 2019 to 65% for the same period in 2022. Ambulance response times for call-outs over life-threatening issues have failed to meet their targets, with almost 100 patients waiting more than four hours last year. Other life-threatening emergencies should be responded to within the timeframe in 50% of cases, as stated by HIQA. However this figure has also plummeted, from 49% four years ago to 30% in December 2020.

In almost 6,200 emergency call-outs last year, it took an hour for an ambulance to respond to calls over life-threatening issues. The data I am outlining clearly show we have a serious problem with the response times of ambulances. There appears to be a gap between demand and capacity. It is high time this issue was dealt with. Lives are being put at risk. It is clearly an issue whereby we need more vehicles and people to man them. I look forward to the response the Minister of State will outline to the House this morning on how we go about tackling this issue before more lives are lost and put in danger.