The Emergency Call Answering Service (ECAS) answers all 112 and 999 calls to the Emergency Services in the State. Emergency calls are free of charge to callers on all telecommunications networks. The ECAS is funded through the Call Handling Fee (“CHF”), a fee payable by the telecommunications operator presenting the call. ECAS also manages an emergency text messaging service allowing deaf, hard of hearing and speech-impaired people in the Republic of Ireland to send an emergency SMS text message. Following a competitive procurement process, the Department appointed BT Ireland to operate the ECAS initially for five years to 14 July 2015. This was extended for 2 years to 14 July 2017 following a detailed assessment of the costs and benefits of extending the current agreement and procurement of a new service. The total value of this contract including set up costs, operator salaries, accommodation and telecommunications costs is estimated at €55 million over the seven year term.
The ECAS is performing to a consistently high standard and exceeding all of the performance levels set out in the Concession Agreement. It has handled over 10 million calls since it launched in July 2010 and has filtered out over 6.2 million calls allowing the emergency services to deal with genuine emergency calls. The average speed of answer for a caller to ECAS is 0.6 seconds which is one of the fastest in Europe according to a report by the European Commission “Implementation of the European emergency number 112 ”. Calls are passed to the appropriate Emergency Service in under 6.5 seconds on average with details of the emergency and the location of the caller.
My Department is in the process of preparing an invitation to tender (ITT) for a new concession agreement to operate the service with effect from 14 July 2017.
Details of the call volumes requested is set out in this following table:
|
|
2014
|
2015 (to 1 September 2015)
|
|
Total Calls to ECAS
|
2,149,445
|
1,243,827
|
|
Garda
|
595,850
|
363,827
|
|
Fire
|
72,203
|
44,874
|
|
Ambulance
|
287,156
|
190,677
|
|
Coast Guard
|
7,811
|
5,270
|
|
Total Landline Calls
|
538,006
|
311,330
|
|
Total Mobile Calls
|
1,611,439
|
932,497
|
It should be noted that these figures only represent 112/999 calls to the Emergency Services and do not include other direct calls to local stations or offices.
The percentage paid by individual phone providers is commercially sensitive and is not provided in order to respect the legitimate commercial interests of the phone providers.
