THE NATIONAL AMBULANCE Service (NAS) has cancelled all annual leave for the next three weeks as the system tries to deal with serious pressures caused by Covid. 

The service is currently at Level 3 in its Capacity Action Programme. This means that there are not enough ambulances to fill demand. 

The HSE and the NAS are now looking to external providers, such as private firms, to help deal with the pressure on the system.

Staff within the NAS were informed yesterday evening that all annual leave which had been booked for the next three weeks have now been cancelled. 

The ban on annual leave will be reviewed once the service exits Level 3, according to a directive issued to staff. 

The HSE would not comment directly on the order cancelling leave. Instead the spokesperson outlined what is being done under Level 3.

A spokesperson said: “NAS has a surge plan in place which represents a national approach to capacity planning intended to enable a consistent sector approach to patient safety, risk mitigation as well as system and resilience understanding at times of escalating pressure.

“It provides systems partners and stakeholders with a clear visual representation of the issues faced and actions being considered and taken.  The plan has four levels of escalation.

“Last week, in response to demand which exceeds capacity, which is also affected by Covid, NAS has escalated its surge response to Level 3 which includes seeking support from external service providers and a range of internal resilience measures which includes reviewing all planned abstractions.”

We also reported how the ambulance service had gone to Level 3 last week.

“Unless an urgent and workable plan is produced by the HSE, we will continue to see incidents like this well into January and February,” Phil Ní Sheaghdha of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said last week. 

“Incidents like this are inevitable due to a lack of a plan B from the HSE when it comes to hospital capacity,” she said.

Pressure on the entire health system continues to grow with the spread of the Omicron variant as well as traditional winter demand for services. 

There are currently 936 people in hospital with Covid with 84 of those in ICU.