A report to be published later is expected to highlight delays in ambulances responding to '999' calls.

The Health Information and Quality report will point to problems with crews being held up at hospital emergency departments.

One incident in particular saw five of the six ambulances on duty for county Donegal were held in one Emergency Department for hours.

One of the most worrying findings is that no audits of patient outcomes are kept for ambulances other than response time.

It's reported that some ambulances can be there for hours at a time.

The investigation was prompted by many regions missing their response time targets but found far deeper problems with the service.

They met with 200 people working in the ambulance service for the purpose of the report, and studied ambulance response times between June 2013 and August 2014.

They’re now calling on the National Ambulance Service and Dublin Fire Brigade to publish a joint action plan on how they can improve their performance.

This morning, Shane Coleman ran through the report with Newstalk Breakfast and discussed the main findings, particularly the waiting times for those who were in a serious condition:

Austin Byrne, Unite representative and paramedic in Co. Louth, also spoke to Breakfast about the report and was asked did he experience any of these delays that are detailed in the report:

Phelim Quinn, Chief Executive of HIQA, spoke to Jonathan Healy on Lunchtime today and stated that there were a couple of issues in respect of the report: "It is a part of a programme of assurance."

"We believe that there is a requirement for combined effort (for services) to make more efficient the rate at which ambulances can dispatch a patient and be re-introduced into the system to deal with emergency calls."

 The Fianna Fáil spokesperson for Health, Billy Kelleher, stressed the need for resources:

Mary Dunion from HIQA discussed the report and its findings at a launch this afternoon: