Patient only a kilometre from hospital waited over an hour for an ambulance in Kilkenny

A patient was left waiting for an ambulance for over an hour following a collision in Kilkenny CIty earlier this month.

Gardaí remained with the man at the scene, only a kilometre away from St Luke’s Hospital, until the ambulance arrived.

Local TD John McGuinness has criticised the National Ambulance Service describing it as ‘not fit for purpose’.

“The service is inefficient with many patients being left to wait for hours for an ambulance. The service is not fit for purpose and is failing staff within the service and patients.

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“Huge distress is being caused to families as they wait for an ambulance and watch over a sick family member or friend.”

The Fianna Fáil deputy has raised the issue in the Dáil on a number of occasions ‘regarding the service generally and individual cases’.

All NAS resources are dispatched to calls across the country from the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) on a nearest available (to the incident) basis and not on a county boundary basis.

The NAS does not report on a county by county basis but on a regional basis.

Kilkenny is part of the South region which comprises of Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary (South), Waterford, Wexford, Cork and Kerry.

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Meanwhile the Director of the National Ambulance Service, Robert Morton said that the NAS is looking at the area that was the M8 corridor down to Durrow and Cullahill.

“We are currently working with Kilkenny County Council to procure the old fire station in Urlingford with a view to setting up an emergency dispatch point that would then service what was the old N8 corridor; places like Cullahill across to Castlecomer and Durrow and areas that are not particularly well-served by Portlaoise. It is quite a distance away in the event of an emergency.”

In a statement issued by the NAS it said that each year the level of demand for NAS services is growing.

A key target in the HSE’s National Service Plan 2022 is that the majority of ambulance calls to life threatening incidents (ECHO and DELTA calls) are responded to in 18 minutes and 59 seconds or less.

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The Average Response times from January 2019 to December 2021 in the South East (Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary (South), Waterford and Wexford) was 20 minutes in 2019, 21 minutes in 2020 and 28 minutes in 2021.