The High Court has ruled that the Health Service Executive was not an “undertaking” under the Competition Act 2002 when providing ambulance services for emergency calls and public patients, or when buying supplementary ambulance services for those patients. The decision resolved preliminary issues in a claim by Lifeline Ambulance Services Limited; it did not determine every matter pleaded in the action.
Lifeline sought declaratory and injunctive relief, alleging that the HSE’s plan to reduce and eventually end reliance on private ambulance operators risked eliminating it from the market. A 2011 tender anticipated that external providers’ use would decrease over time. The court recorded evidence that Lifeline’s emergency-response work fell from €976,000 in 2008 to €159,000 in 2010, with no such work allocated in 2011; the HSE did not dispute those changes, but maintained it was entitled to make them.
The court distinguished services for public patients and emergencies from transport services for private patients. It found that the HSE made no charge and received no remuneration for emergency and public-patient transport, which was funded from public funds. Although the HSE bought private operators’ services to supplement its own public service, the judge treated the HSE as an end user of those purchases, rather than as buying them for another economic activity. The court therefore answered the first three preliminary issues by finding that the HSE did not operate as an undertaking in those activities.
The court also said the case did not establish a refusal to supply or denial of access to an essential facility. The HSE’s reduced purchases had no proven or claimed effect on Lifeline’s ability to continue providing transport for private patients.
For completeness, the court stated what it would find if the HSE were held to act as an undertaking in providing or purchasing public-patient services. In that event, it would be dominant in those services, given its provision of 99% of them and its position as the only purchaser of services it did not provide itself. But the judge said reducing or ending supplementary purchases would not amount to abuse on the evidence: no competitive advantage in private-patient services had been shown, and requiring the HSE to buy services it did not need would carry the cost of underusing its own resources.
The judgment addressed only the directed preliminary issues. The court left open the possibility of further submissions about Lifeline’s assertions concerning an HSE paramedic-training institute. The source does not record a final determination of the entire action or the relief sought.