Ambulance’s took over an hour to reach a patient in Tipperary nearly 90 times this year.
Freedom of Information figures from the HSE show the volume of work or the distance involved accounted for the vast majority of these.
On three occasions between January and May of this year Paramedics took over two hours to get to a patient in the Premier County – the volume of work facing the crews was the reason given in these instances.
The HSE aims to have an ambulance at the scene of a life-threatening heart or respiratory arrest within 19 minutes in 75 per cent of cases. In all other critical cases, that response time should be met in 45 per cent of cases.
However Freedom of Information figures show that nationally 1,435 life-threatening calls took over an hour to get a response with 86 of these in Tipperary.
On 33 occasions the volume of work being faced by Paramedics led to the slow response while the distance involved accounted for 39 cases according to the National Ambulance Service.
Other reasons included Slow Crew Mobilisation, a nearer resource becoming available while in one instance difficulty in finding the location meant it took almost an hour and 14 minutes to reach the patient.
Nationally the longest wait for an ambulance to arrive was in County Leitrim where it took three hours and 16 minutes.
