The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS, ) is an ambulance service that serves the whole of Northern Ireland, approximately 1.9 million people. As with other ambulance services in the United Kingdom, it does not charge its patients directly for its services, but instead receives funding through general taxation. It responds to medical emergencies in Northern Ireland with the 300-plus ambulance vehicles at its disposal. Its fleet includes mini-buses, ambulance officers' cars, support vehicles, RRVs and accident and emergency ambulances. History NIAS was formed on 1 April 1995 through the amalgamation of its four predecessors. Its full title is the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Health and Social Care Trust. The service is split up into five operational areas: Belfast Area South Eastern Area Western Area Northern Area Southern Area Services The service employs approximately 1,300 staff of which approximately 420 are paramedics, 300 are emergency medical technicians (EMT) and 100 are control centre staff, which work shift patterns to ensure the service is operational 24/7. They are based across 46 stations and sub-stations, two control centres (emergency and non-emergency) and a regional ambulance training centre. It responds to approximately 201,000 emergency (999) calls per year (with the number of 999 calls is increasing per year) with a combination of traditional emergency ambulances with two crew members, and rapid response vehicles (RRV) crewed by a single paramedic. RRVs respond mostly to calls where there is a potential immediate life-threat (Category 1) because they can respond more quickly than a conventional ambulance, RRVs can also be used to respond to lower category of calls that may not require hospital care. Double-crew ambulances respond to both emergency and non-emergency (healthcare professional-initiated urgent) calls as well as providing critical-care transfers between hospitals. The Trust aims to provide at least one paramedic to every emergency call by staffing each double-crew emergency ambulance with two paramedics, or a paramedic and an EMT, and utilising RRV. The trust has not adopted the controversial use of emergency care assistants (ECA) in the way some other UK ambulance services have. In addition to the emergency medical services, NIAS has a fleet of Patient Care Service vehicles which are used for more routine patient transport to/from hospital. Within the Patient Care Service there are both single-crewed 'sitting case' (minibus) vehicles as well as double-crewed 'intermediate care vehicles' (ICV) which carry a stretcher. In 2019, the service entered a partnership with the