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More than one in eight patients in Northern Ireland had to wait 12 hours or longer in emergency departments in December, figures show.

The government's target is for patients to wait no more than 12 hours.

But Department of Health (DoH) figures show that out of 58,791 emergency attendances in December 2021, the target was missed for 7,508 people.

That is almost 13 percent of all people turning up at emergency departments that month.

Craigavon Area Hospital reported the longest average time from arrival to admission - 14 hours and 24 minutes.

The Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children reported the shortest time at five hours and 22 minutes.

Dr Paul Kerr, from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine in Northern Ireland, said the situation was "dire".

"The reality is that patient care is now regularly being compromised, their safety is at risk," he said.

The DoH said that a number of new care pathways have been introduced to ensure patients are able to access the right care, including urgent care centres and phone first centres.

Police help

There is also pressure on the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service and on Thursday, PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne told a Stormont committee police had dealt with almost 2,000 calls sent to them by the ambulance service when it could not send its own crews.

Mr Byrne told the Justice Committee that officers had attended all the calls but in half of those occasions, the ambulance service was unable to attend.

"It meant police officers taking people to hospital in their police cars," he said.

"Some people will say 'just stop doing something', but you be that call handler at three o'clock in the morning when someone is in distress, injured or hurt and are we really going to say 'we're are not coming, we're the police and not an ambulance' when someone's life is in danger?"