ONLY A SIXTH of the ambulances and other medical vehicles purchased by the Health Services Executive in the last 20 months have been put to use, it has emerged.

Data obtained by the Medical Independent’s Ailbhe Jordan shows that while the HSE Ambulance Service acquired 95 vehicles since the beginning of 2010, only 16 had been ’commissioned’, or made ready for public use.

The HSE has spent €23.4m on emergency vehicles between 2007 and 2011, the publication said, with the highest spending coming in 2007 when the executive purchased 67 vehicles for €9.4m. No vehicles were bought in 2009.

A HSE statement explained that its fleet replacement programme operated on a phased basis, in order to spread the cost of each vehicle across a number of years, and also to account for the stages each vehicle had to go through to be made ready for use.

Those processes generally took 18 months, the statement said, which was why vehicles recorded as being purchased in a given year were not commissioned for use until the following year.

The Medical Independent’s data also suggested that 13 vehicles commissioned in 2008 had not yet been put to use, though the HSE’s statement said all vehicles bought by the executive before that time were now in use.

Last month it emerged that three of the nine emergency vehicles bought by Dublin Fire Brigade between 2007 and 2011 had not been commissioned.