Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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138. To ask the Minister for Health if she is satisfied that the current ambulance dispatch system ensures timely and equitable emergency response across all regions; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [52501/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy may be aware, a 2014 HIQA report into prehospital emergency care services highlighted the dynamic deployment of emergency ambulance resources as a means to improve ambulance response times and National Ambulance Service (NAS) performance generally.

The dynamic model of deployment is in line with international best practice and allows the NAS to prioritise resource allocation to those high acuity calls that require an immediate emergency response. It also allows the NAS to categorise non-serious or non-life-threatening calls, and to provide a resource appropriate to the patient’s clinical need.

Dynamic deployment of emergency resources has also served to address some of the historical safety issues that pre-dated this model where under the old ambulance station-based static system the nearest ambulance located to the scene of an emergency incident did not always respond to the call.