Ambulances took more than an hour to respond to almost 3,000 emergency calls in 2025 with 300 of them in the region that included Cavan and Monaghan.
In one case, the response time was listed as just under seven hours while five other calls took more than four hours.
The data released under a freedom of information request by Northern Sound covers incidents classified as Purple and Red calls for 2025. Purple calls are considered the highest level of emergency.
The national target is to respond in 75% of cases of life-threatening cardiac or respiratory arrest which are Purple calls and 45% of cases of life-threatening illness or injury which are Red calls in just under 19 minutes. According to the information released to Northern Sound, the target for purple calls was never met on a national level with the closest being just over 74% in May and the lowest being in December at just over 62%.
While the 45% target for all Red calls were met for 5 months of the year on a national level with the lowest being December at over 37%. When it comes to the HSE Dublin North East region, 6 months the 75% target for Purple calls were met in that 19 minute time frame, and 2 more months were above 74%. The biggest concern locally was the target dropped to just over 59% in December for all Purple calls within the 19 minutes window which was one of the worst percentages in the country during 2025.
While for Red calls locally, only 3 months the target of 45% of all calls were not met with December coming out worst at just above 40%. The longest call was just over 6 hours and 55 minutes in 2025, it was a Red call in the HSE Dublin and Midlands area.
The longest Purple call was just over 2 hours and 49 minutes and that occurred in quarter 4 in the HSE region of Dublin and the South East. Locally within the HSE region which includes Cavan and Monaghan, one patient waited 3 hours and 3 minutes for an ambulance for a Red call that was made last year.
Within the timeframe of waiting over a hour, 300 patients within the local health region did that in 2025.
