National Ambulance Service Received Almost 1,400 Fake Calls Last Year

That's according to new figures in the Sunday Independent, which show the numbers rose toward the end of 2021.

Over 300 fake or prank calls were recorded during the school holiday months of June and July.

The NAS said calls were categorised as a hoax where the caller terminated the conversation before providing sufficient detail to warrant sending an ambulance.

They said: “Other indications are the caller laughing (adult or child). The trained emergency call taker would escalate a suspected hoax call to the control supervisor who would assess, analyse and make a decision on the authenticity of the call.”

The NAS said they had received more than 363,000 calls last year, of which only a small fraction were hoax calls.