The National Ambulance Service has had severe delays in arriving at priority calls in the first half of the year.
Crews took more than an hour to arrive at 500 priority calls in the first six months of the year – 41 of those delays were in Wexford.
Brendan Flynn from The National Ambulance Service Representative Association says the delays are down to a multi-system failure within the HSE:
“It’s down to lack of investment in the ambulance service and factors that are beyond the control of the ambulance service such as waiting times in the EDs to hand over patients. The lack of beds in the system. You could go on but it’s really down to investment. It’s a multi-system failure really.”
Wait times for people in Wexford are particularly concerning – given that the South East doesn’t have a 24/7 cardiac service.
Sinn Féin Health Spokesperson David Cullinane says people in the region are even more reliant on the ambulance service for this reason
“The wait times for ambulance response times in the Southeast has always been higher than other parts of the country and obviously that’s more problematic because of the fact we don’t have 24/7 cardiac services.”
Delays of up to four hours were reported in some instances but the National Ambulance Service says high priority cases were not waiting for more than an hour.
