Member's statement: Ambulance Handover Times

Member's statement by Mr Danny Donnelly on 17 February 2026.

MLA

Mr Danny Donnelly

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

17 February 2026

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Ambulance Handover Times

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5394267

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I rise to raise the issue of ambulance handover times. In January last year, the Minister of Health was called before an urgent meeting of the Health Committee amid sustained pressures on the health service that winter. There, he talked about how his winter preparedness plan for this year would be better. It started with a blank page, and it was to involve big discussions with experts about how we reduce pressure on the health service. That is how we were supposed to move forward. One of the focus areas was about reducing ambulance handover waits to two hours. Yet, here we are, a year later, having seen that an ambulance waited outside the Ulster Hospital for 19 hours and four minutes before the patient was admitted. That is not a statistic in isolation: it is a person in pain and distress, waiting almost an entire day and night in the back of a vehicle before even getting in the door of an emergency department. In that same month, 40% of ambulance arrivals at the Ulster Hospital waited longer than two hours. The average handover time there was two hours and 28 minutes. The longest wait at the Causeway Hospital exceeded 16 hours, and, at Antrim Area Hospital and Craigavon Area Hospital, it was more than 15 hours. Across Northern Ireland, emergency departments remain under constant pressure. In his winter preparedness plan, the Minister set a target that, by the start of December, handover should not exceed two hours; yet, in several hospitals, a quarter of arrivals or more breached that standard. Last year, Northern Ireland's Comptroller and Auditor General reported that ambulance handover delays led to thousands of incidents of potential harm. Those delays carry serious risk. Let me be clear: this is not a criticism of front-line staff. Ambulance crews and emergency department teams are working in extremely challenging conditions for sustained periods. Ambulance handover delays are a symptom of deeper system blockages. When inpatient beds are full, discharge is delayed and community services are overstretched, the pressure builds at the hospital front door. Ambulances become holding areas because there is nowhere else for patients to go. We need more than winter plans and workshops. We need to remove the blockages in patient flow. We need proper workforce planning and a meaningful expansion of care in the community to prevent avoidable admissions and support timely discharge. No one should ever spend 19 hours in the back of an ambulance. No paramedic crew should spend its entire shift parked outside an emergency department, and no patient or their family should endure that uncertainty. Delay means fewer ambulances on the road answering calls, and it backs up an already dangerously overstretched system, meaning that those in dire need are waiting longer and are at risk of further harm. The figures should serve as a wake-up call. Managing pressure is not enough: we must fix the structural problems that create it.

490 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:39 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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