Ambulance response targets missed across Cork

The National Ambulance Service (NAS) failed to meet any of its response-time targets in the HSE South West region, covering Cork and Kerry, during the first three months of 2026.

Ambulances responding to the most serious emergency callouts in Cork and Kerry took an average of two minutes longer to reach patients in the first quarter of this year.

Under the NAS classification system, the most critical incidents are categorised as 'purple' calls, involving cardiac or respiratory arrest, while 'red' calls relate to other life-threatening illnesses or injuries.

The service aims to reach 75% of purple calls and 45% of red calls within 19 minutes.

The South West recorded the worst performance in the country for life-threatening 'red' calls, with just 36% reached within 19 minutes in January.

HSE figures show that ambulances in the region reached 68% of 'purple' calls within the target time in January, rising to 72% in February and 71% in March. For red calls, the equivalent figures were 36%, 41%, and 49%.

By comparison, performance was stronger during the same period in 2025, when the region met the national target for purple calls in January and achieved the target for red calls in both February and March.

Overall, the amount of calls responded to within the target time dropped from 58% to 54%.

Average response time for purple and red calls in the South West from the January-April period increased from 24 minutes in 2025 to 26 minutes in 2026.

Widening gap

The figures were provided to Sinn Féin health spokesperson David Cullinane, who said that “recruitment efforts continue to be surpassed by service demand.

“It will take several years of sustained consistent investment to reduce the widening gap between rapidly rising demand and the capacity available to respond to that demand," he said.

"The data shows that nationally the percentage of callout responded to within target times decreased year-on-year, despite the numbers of ambulance calls falling from 108,915 in the first quarter of 2025 to 94,122 in the first quarter of 2026, a reduction of 13.6%.

Cork Sinn Féin TD Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire told The Echo: “Our ambulance personnel are doing their absolute best, but they are being let down by the National Ambulance Service.

“When they took industrial action earlier this year, one of their main concerns was the fact that they were not getting the support they needed to respond adequately to call outs.

“They have repeatedly raised concerns about excessive overtime, burnout, late finishes, career structures, and the failure to properly recognise their growing clinical responsibilities," said Mr Ó Laoghaire.

“The proof of this is the fact that even though call volumes fell, response times actually still got worse, including here in Cork.

“Behind each set of numbers is a person in a crisis situation, maybe having a heart attack, a stroke, after a crash, an emergency — every minute counts for such people and for their families.”