Gardaí have launched review into new 999 call-taking system just a year after its launch
Deputy Commissioner Shawna Coxon told a Dáil committee this week that a formal process to examine why 999 calls are going unanswered is underway.
It comes after the Dr Elaine Byrne chair of the
Policing and Community Safety Authority
said that gardaí wasting time on frivolous call outs was because of an 'over-correction' in the wake of the cancelled 999 calls scandal.
As revealed by
The Journal
previously
,
gardaí
are facing a backlog of hundreds of calls
on a daily basis across the country because there is now no triaging of calls. First reported in 2023, multiple sources said this week that the situation is unchanged.
The Policing Authority carried out a major enquiry into the
999 call cancelling scandal
. This identified failings in how domestic violence calls were responded.
An Garda Síochána introduced a new Computer Aided Dispatch system known as 'GardaSAFE'.
Along with that, members of the public calling the gardaí are directed through to 999 call lines – which means that all calls, no matter how minor, go through the emergency system. The practice came in for strong criticism from Dublin TD Tom Brabazon at a hearing of the Justice Committee.
The reality of the overcorrection was laid bare in the hearing this week.
Speaking at a meeting with Commissioner Drew Harris and other senior gardaí Brabazon said that the public's experience of the system 'was not a positive one'.
'People are very reluctant to ring 999, they feel that this is counter-intuitive. 999 has always been an emergency number, not necessarily for something that's potentially a quality of life issue like anti-social behavior, etc.
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'So the experience has been that people using 999 are not getting the responses that they require,' he said.
Brabazon said he had a constituent who contacted him because she received no garda contact about a missing child call she made. Another constituent complained that there was no response to a criminal damage incident.
'The person rang 999 because they previously were advised by myself that was the course of action that they should take. There was no response. No gardaí showed up.
'He subsequently followed up with the local Garda station [but] the garda station had got no information on that particular incident. There was a complete gap, a complete breakdown.'
In another incident Brabazon himself called gardaí last week when he witnessed an incident with a person wielding a knife which had caused significant distress to an elderly man.
Brabazon said that no gardaí responded to the call after he gave the details on the 999 call line.
Commissioner Harris said that the gardaí had received 'a lot of feedback not dissimilar' to what the TD had outlined following the rollout of the Gardasafe system and centralised control rooms.
He confirmed there was a review underway 'to reassess this connection with the community'.
'Can I say it was done with the best of intentions in terms of having, in effect, a record, a recording of any exchanges with the public over the phone,' he said.
Deputy Garda Commissioner Shauna Coxon that the review was underway to deal with incidents similar to the experience as Brabazon had described.
Coxon said that the system was introduced because garda managers were having difficulties tracking responses to calls.
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