The National Ambulance Service is under scrutiny as their crews took more than an hour to arrive at 500 high priority calls in the first six months of the year.
Delays of up to four hours were reported in some cases.
Cork had the highest number of ambulance delays nationally.
According to the National Ambulance Service Figures released to the Irish Examiner. there were 77 high-priority cases where ambulances took more than an hour to arrive.
It was followed by Wexford - where there were 41 instances, Tipperary where it happened 35 times and Kilkenny where there were 34 cases where people had to wait more than an hour.
In total between the months of January and June, 500 priority calls faced significant delays.
The paper reports in some instances people were left waiting for four hours - but the NAS said there were no 'hour plus delays - in the highest priority cases'.
