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🇮🇪 Ireland /Health & Science

Ambulances Took More Than an Hour to Arrive in Over 20,000 Cases, FOI Figures Show

From RTÉ News · () English

Translated from English and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Documents & data Context piece
  • National Ambulance Service figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request show 20,244 responses took more than an hour between 2021 and 2025.
  • The delays included 46 purple calls, the highest-priority cases involving cardiac or respiratory arrest, while two responses took about seven hours.
  • Ambulance staff and their union blamed inadequate resources and hospital emergency-department backlogs, while the service cautioned that call priorities can change during incidents.

Irish ambulances took more than an hour to reach emergency calls on 20,244 occasions over five years, according to figures obtained by RTÉ’s Drivetime through a Freedom of Information request.

The figures cover 2021 to 2025 and relate to purple and red calls, the two highest emergency categories. Purple calls involve the most serious incidents, including cardiac or respiratory arrest. Red calls concern other life-threatening illnesses or injuries. The National Ambulance Service aims to reach 75% of purple calls within 19 minutes and 45% of red calls within the same period.

It's very frustrating and you do end up arriving into someone's house or their workplace or a football pitch to be met with angry faces

· Stephen McGuinnessThe paramedic described the reaction crews face after long emergency-response delays.

Forty-six of the delays exceeding an hour involved purple calls. In 129 cases, patients waited more than four hours, and two responses took around seven hours.

It all comes back to resources

· Stephen McGuinnessMcGuinness identified staffing and capacity constraints as the underlying problem.

Stephen McGuinness, a paramedic and SIPTU shop steward in eastern Ireland, said ambulance crews faced constant pressure and often arrived to find patients’ relatives or bystanders angry. He linked delays to ambulances being held at hospitals because emergency departments could not move patients into wards or discharge them, creating a backlog.

McGuinness described one potential chain of delay: a crew could spend an hour clearing a hospital, then take another hour and a half to reach a football pitch after the call had already been waiting for an hour. That could produce a response time of three and a half hours, he said, adding that the problem ultimately came back to resources.

We would put the blame on any delays on the fact that there isn't adequate resources in the ambulance service

· John McCamleyThe SIPTU organizer attributed delays to insufficient ambulance-service resources.

The National Ambulance Service said the figures should be treated cautiously because a call’s priority can change during an incident. John McCamley, SIPTU’s ambulance-sector organizer, said the service needs more ambulances and that the workforce should be doubled. In October 2025, NAS director Robert Morton told an Oireachtas health committee that the service needed “more of everything, everywhere,” with rural areas among the worst affected.

More of everything, everywhere

· Robert MortonThe National Ambulance Service director described the service’s needs to an Oireachtas health committee.
About this summary

Originally published by RTÉ News in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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