Ambulance service in Northern Ireland operating at highest level of alert ever

The news comes following the death of a man in recent day who had been waiting more than nine hours for an ambulance to arrive.

It is not yet known if the man’s death was a direct result of the delay in receiving medical assistance, however, the NIAS sets a target of no more than two hours for attending a call deemed to be ‘Category 3’.

It is known that his patient’s status was subsequently upgraded to the most serious ‘Category 1’ status but the ambulance still failed to respond within the eight minute Category 1 target.

Speaking on BBC Radio's Nolan show, NIAS assistant director Mark Cochrane said: “The incident highlights the warnings that we have been giving for some time now – that delays in ambulances responding to patients, inevitably will result in harm coming to patients.”

Mr Cochrane said the delays were largely a result of ambulances having to queue outside Emergency Departments due to a lack of beds in our hospitals.

This situation is a knock-on effect of patients fit for release not leaving the hospitals because their care packages, or place at a preferred nursing home, are available.

"Every day I am saying ‘this is as bad as I have seen it,’ Mr Cochrane said.

Mr Cochrane also said that due to “extreme pressure on the system,” the service is now operating at an unprecedented ‘level 4’ alert.

Those concerns were echoed by the NIAS chief executive Michael Bloomfield at a press briefing on Wednesday afternoon.

Mr Bloomfield said: “It has been a particularly busy period and we expect that to continue, and indeed get worse, over the next couple of weeks.

"Over the last four weeks we have received an average of about 800 [emergency] 999 calls every day, but it peaked on Monday of this week at 1,000."

Ambulance staff in Northern Ireland were working as normal on Wednesday and will not be joining a second one-day strike taking place across England and Wales on December 28.