The National Ambulance Service needs an additional 750 staff and 250 ambulances to improve its performance in responding to emergencies within specified times, according to a HSE-commissioned report.
Even with these resources, the service would not be able to meet official targets for response times because Ireland is too rural to support an ambulance service to match the performance of the service in England.
Ireland’s high “rurality” and the fact Irish people are less than half as likely to call an ambulance than people in England, means the cost of running the service in Ireland is significantly higher by comparison, the report by UK consultancy Lightfoot Solutions found.
Numerous controversies
The report was commissioned following numerous controversies over response times of ambulances in specific incidents in rural areas and claims by staff that the service is under-resourced.
A draft report was completed last year and a summary published by the HSE, but the consultants were then asked to perform an in-depth calculation of the extra resources needed by the service to improve its performance.
Reductions in the resources needed could be achieved by unifying the service with the Dublin Fire Brigade, which currently provides overlapping services in the greater Dublin area.
Ambulance staff who are members of Siptu announced earlier this year they would ballot on industrial action over the previous government’s failure to publish the final review, which was completed last October.
