A woman who died from a heart attack spent 22 minutes waiting for an ambulance to arrive although she was in a house just a few minutes drive from the ambulance station, the inquest into her death heard yesterday.
Drogheda Coroner's Court heard that the ambulance crew responded within three minutes, but went to another housing estate with the same name and spent crucial minutes trying to get into the wrong house.
Coroner Ronan Maguire heard Mary Judd Morrish was staying with her daughter at Sycamore Close, which is part of Termon Abbey, an estate of 800 houses in Drogheda.
It is not listed in the directory on the satellite navigation system used by the ambulance service although another much smaller estate called the Sycamores, in the Greenhills area of Drogheda, is. It was there the crew inadvertently went.
Pathologist Dr John Ryan found Mrs Morrish had coronary heart disease and suffered a heart attack just as the ambulance crew did arrive.
They began CPR and took her to the Lourdes hospital where she was resuscitated, but had at that point suffered severe brain damage and later died. She did not get to hospital until 47 minutes after the ambulance was first called.
Mr Maguire said the ambulance crew spent "seven to eight minutes outside the wrong address trying to get in, presuming the person inside had collapsed".
"All these delays added to the problem and delayed Mrs Morrish getting treatment. However, I cannot find that the delay caused her death."