Fifty new ambulances are to be purchased this year as part of a major investment in the National Ambulance Service.

Some €18 million in capital funding is being made available to the service in 2016, which will allow for the purchase of the new vehicles, as well as the refurbishment of a further 35 ambulances.

According to the Department of Health, this means that the ambulance fleet should expand to 268 vehicles by the end of this year, ‘depending on the decommissioning requirements of older vehicles'.

"The introduction of over 150 vehicles in 2015 and 2016 is a real boost for the ambulance service. It allows us to replace older vehicles and expand services, especially in non-emergency transport. Moving patients from high to lower acuity facilities means that patient flow in our major hospitals will improve, which should help to ease pressure on our Emergency Departments," commented the Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar.

He noted that replacing older vehicles ‘will also help to reduce costs and improve reliability'.

"Our ambulances and crews cover enormous distances every year. It is vital that we continue to invest in and upgrade our fleet, so that our highly trained paramedics can give the best service they can when our patients need it," he said.

As part of the investment, a further 10 intermediate care vehicles, which are used for non-emergency patient transport, will be purchased. This will increase that fleet from 50 to 60.

Intermediate care vehicles play a crucial role in patient transport because they perform hospital transfers and can carry more than one patient, freeing up emergency ambulances to respond to emergency calls.

Meanwhile, a new rapid response vehicle will also be purchased, bringing that fleet up to 120 vehicles. These vehicles are responsible for ensuring that advanced life support arrives quickly to the scene of an accident, ‘so that sophisticated treatment can begin while the ambulance is en route', the department explained.

This year's new vehicles will come on top of the 65 that were bought last year. They will be ‘spread throughout the fleet nationally, to replace vehicles which have reached the end of their life cycle and to support additional services', the department added.