A mobile treatment centre in Britain costing nearly €638,000 has been opened to keep drunk people out of A&E.
The Alcohol Recovery Centre comes in a 65-foot-long truck trailer and is equipped with several beds, a waiting area and showers.
By 11pm on Saturday night, the centre had already welcomed its first visitors, all of different ages and from a variety of backgrounds.
Chris Hewett from South Western Ambulance said: "We're trying to achieve two things."
"The first thing is take the pressure off our colleagues in the hospitals, and the other thing is to try and keep the 999 ambulances free to go out and answer life-threatening emergencies."
It is hoped the centre will reduce the number of visits to hospital A&E departments, giving paramedics a dedicated space to help people who may be vulnerable because they have drunk too much.
A trial of the scheme, which ran in Bristol during December 2013, was praised for saving hundreds of hospital hours.
There are plans to open more centres like it across the UK in the next 18 months.
Almost 10 million hospital admissions in England last year were related to alcohol, and the cost to the UK's National Health Service (NHS) was up to stg£1.3bn (€1.66bn).
