NAS 999 Emergency Operations Centre 4.21

The NAS National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) is currently based in Tallaght and processes all NAS ambulance requests for counties Cork, Kerry, Kildare, Wicklow, Meath, Louth, Monaghan, Cavan,Dublin, Clare and serves a population of 2,725,853 (Census 2011).

With a staff of over 70, the centre handles on average 13,000 calls per month, which consist of 999 emergencies, GP Urgent and routine hospital calls. This equates to over 156,000 calls per annum.

All 999 emergency calls, GP and Hospital emergencies are processed using The Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS) which is a Computer aided dispatch system that allows appropriately trained people to give the best possible care to the patient by taking the caller through a set list of triage questions to determine the most appropriate level of response required.

The NEOC staff dispatch a number of different types of responses including Emergency Ambulances, ICV Ambulance, Rapid Response vehicles (RRVs) Community First Responder Schemes, Doctor Responders and Fire Services Responder Schemes. NEOC staff use Tetra digital radio system to communicate with all NAS Vehicles and all hospital emergency depts.

The NEOC is part of National Ambulance Service control centre reconfiguration project. The service control centre reconfiguration project and associated ICT enabling projects aim to reduce the number of ambulance control centres from eight to one, operating over two sites - Tallaght and Ballyshannon - and transition of communications from analogue to digital, including voice and data. The total value of this project, which commenced in late 2010, is €23 million.

The national ambulance service control centre reconfiguration project represents one of the most critical and complex pieces of the State's emergency infrastructure ever undertaken. NEOC move from Townsend St to the Rivers building, Tallaght in Janurary 2015.