Member's statement: Ambulance Response Times in Rural Areas

Member's statement by Mr Danny Donnelly on 28 April 2026.

MLA

Mr Danny Donnelly

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

28 April 2026

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Ambulance Response Times in Rural Areas

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5509509

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I rise to talk about ambulance response times in rural areas. Recent figures have confirmed that just one in seven category 1 calls in rural areas are responded to by the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) within the targeted response time of eight minutes. At first glance, eight minutes may not sound like much, but, in reality, it can be the difference between life and death. Imagine if you or someone you love goes into cardiac arrest or begins to choke or is involved in a serious incident and is bleeding heavily. Suddenly, eight minutes is not just a target on paper. It is not a statistic, nor is it a performance indicator. Category 1 calls are the most urgent emergencies. They are described by NIAS as "immediately life-threatening". Those are moments when every minute lost can worsen outcomes and reduce the chance of survival. In urban areas, that target is missed in more than half of category 1 calls: 52% are missed. That, in itself, is unacceptable. In rural communities, there is an 85% chance that the eight-minute target will not be met for the most serious, urgent and life-threatening emergencies. We already know that people living in rural areas are often disadvantaged by poor transport infrastructure, longer travel times and wider health inequalities. That means that timely access to emergency care is absolutely essential. When only one in seven of those calls is being reached within the target, rural communities are not just being let down; they are being disregarded. I want to be clear: this is an issue for the Department of Health and the Minister. No blame should be directed at the dedicated and hard-working staff of the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service, who work under immense pressure and are not the cause of the crisis. They are the victims of pressures and inefficiencies in the wider health system. This is not just about ambulances but about delays in handing patients over to emergency departments, poor hospital flow and the lack of capacity in our communities. It is a perfect example of what happens when pressures upstream are ignored for too long. When patients cannot move through hospitals, ambulances cannot get back on the road. When ambulances cannot get back on the road, response times worsen. When response times worsen for category 1 calls, the consequences can be catastrophic. We are talking about people's lives. When we discuss excess deaths in A&E, winter pressures, ambulance handover delays and category 1 targets, those are not separate conversations; they are part of the same patient safety crisis. Every delay has a consequence, and every missed target has a human cost. When only one in seven rural category 1 calls is being reached on time, the Department must treat that with the urgency that the risk to people's lives demands.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:27 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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