Fresh calls have been made for additional ambulances in West Clare.
It follows an incident this week, in which a young girl is understood to have waited 2 and a half hours for an ambulance after sustaining a serious knee injury at a game in Quilty.
It’s believed another ambulance originally dispatched to the incident had to be diverted to respond to a life-threatening call elsewhere in the county.
However, Quilty Fianna Fáil Councillor Michael Shannon insists it’s high time a third ambulance is allocated to the region to prevent the scenario in future.
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Statement from the HSE
The HSE cannot comment on individual cases. All 999/112 calls received for emergency medical assistance are prioritised using an internationally recognised system that triages calls based on clinical priority, which range from life-threatening- cardiac or respiratory arrest to minor illness or injury.
The NAS utilises this system to ensure the best use of resources by tasking the nearest available ambulance to the highest priority incident. The NAS operates a dynamic model of ambulance deployment in line with international best practice. This model ensures that NAS prioritises resource allocation to the highest acuity calls that require an immediate emergency response. Dynamic deployment 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. This does mean that at particularly busy periods, lower acuity calls will be liable to experience longer waiting times for an ambulance.
Calls for emergency service support via the 999 service have increased by over 25% since 2019, with the National Ambulance Service (NAS) responding to approximately 430,000 emergency calls in 2024, a notable increase from 390,000 in 2023.
