Almost one in 10 ambulances wait over an hour to transfer patients
Almost one in 10 ambulance trips had to wait for more than an hour to discharge patients at hospital emergency departments in April, it has emerged.
A report published by the National Ambulance Service shows that most ambulance crews waited longer than the HSE target of 20 minutes to hand over patients.
Ambulances spent over 8,000 hours delayed at hospital emergency departments in one month.
Cork University Hospital was shown to have the longest wait times - with 89% of ambulances delayed longer than 20 minutes.
Ambulance response times have been the subject of focus after a series of deaths involving people who had to wait for ambulances.
Denis Naughten, TD for Roscommon-South Leitrim, said that we need to properly resource our ambulance service.
"It is shocking and it's something that we cannot continue to tolerate," he said.
"We need to address the problems at our accident and emergency departments to ensure that ambulances are turned around in a timely manner.
"We also need to properly resource our ambulance service."
