Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 1 July 2021
339. Deputy Martin Browne asked the Minister for Justice the number of cancelled 999 calls by Garda division and by the subject of the cancelled calls by division in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [35443/21]
View answerI welcome the apology that was made by the Garda Commissioner last week and the Commissioner has assured me that when someone calls 999 now, they can expect and trust that An Garda Síochána will help. That should of course always be the case.
As the Deputy will be aware, the Policing Authority, at the request of Minister McEntee, is overseeing the Garda review of this matter, and this work is ongoing. Once the Authority has completed its work, I will examine its conclusions, and any action that needs to be taken on foot of that report will be taken.
I am advised by the Garda authorities that calls for service to An Garda Síochána are processed through a Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system. These calls are channelled through the emergency call service to one of the four regional control rooms located in Dublin, Galway, Cork and Waterford. Such calls also include referrals from other emergency services or calls made to individual Garda stations. There are four categories for calls: Emergency, Priority 1, Priority 2 and Priority 3.
The Garda review of this matter, and the Authority's oversight of it, is ongoing and I am advised that further data will be available as the review progress. The Garda authorities have, however, provided me with the information in the table below, in relation to the number of CAD incidents nationally with a categorisation of Emergency or Priority 1, from 1 January 2019 to 31 April 2021.
|
01 Jan 2019 - 31 Oct 2020 |
% |
1 Nov 2020 - 30 Apr 2021 |
% |
|
|
Emergency CAD incidents (highest priority) |
12385 |
3355 |
||
|
Priority 1 CAD incidents |
163788 |
41480 |
||
|
Emergency incidents with closure status "cancelled" |
766 |
6.2% |
120 |
3.6% |
|
Priority 1 incidents with closure status "cancelled" |
22595 |
13.8% |
2694 |
6.5% |
(The Garda authorities further advise me that CAD changes introduced from 1 November 2020 placed restrictions on how CAD incidents could be closed.)
