Emergency response rate fails to meet targets

ONE in five emergency ambulance call-outs in Ireland are taking almost half an hour to reach those in serious medical difficulty – three times higher than international best-practice standards.

New figures confirmed by the Health Service Executive show 24,360 people have been forced to wait more than 26 minutes for help to arrive since the start of this year.

In the period examined by the HSE ambulance performance statistics, just over a quarter (27%) of call-outs – the equivalent of 37,330 emergencies – were within the internationally accepted best-practice time of eight minutes.