Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 6 Jun 1991

Vol. 409 No. 5

Garda Síochána Communications System.

Mr. McCartan

I would like to thank the office of the Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity to raise this important issue. It is a matter of the greatest importance when one considers that upwards of £26 million of taxpayers' money has been spent over the last number of years providing what we understood to be a comprehensive and modern system of communications for the Garda Síochána in the operation of their duties. It is with great distress that we read in our national newspapers that the system does not appear to be working. What is worse for the citizens who have paid so dearly for it, is that their rights are not being protected in the way the system was originally designed to do. It is important that we get a full explanation from the Minister of State here tonight as to what is wrong with the system, what steps are being taken to put it right and how soon the Garda can work with this system to the fullest effect.

The fact that there were major problems with the new Garda communications network was already a matter of public knowledge. The Comptroller and Auditor General highlighted the huge over-run in costs in his report last year. A system that was meant to cost between £3 million and £5 million ended up costing almost £30 million. In an Adjournment Debate here on 14 March last I drew attention to the difficulties gardaí were having with the new system and how the Garda Commissioner had effectively banned the use of walkie-talkies in an effort to compel gardaí to use the new system.

However, if the failure of the new system is as extensive as was reported in yesterday's Irish Press, then it is clear that this is a major scandal involving huge public expenditure on a system that is cumbersome, unsatisfactory and possibly unworkable.

An effective communications system is an essential prerequisite for an effective policing system. It can determine not only the number of criminals arrested but can sometimes mean the difference between life and death for a person under attack. There have been complaints in the past about delays in dealing with 999 calls, and it was hoped that the new system would improve the situation. However, if anything, it seems to have made it worse.

What seems beyond doubt is that there has been a considerable level of resistance among members of the force to using the new system. I hope it is not a question of the members of the gardaí deliberately obstructing the use of the system in the hope of securing some productivity money. Such an attitude would be most unfair to the taxpayer whose money has been spent installing the system.

It may be that the gardaí have been inadequately trained in the use of the system and that they do not have any confidence in it, or it may be that there are not enough staff trained in its use, and that there are not enough trained staff to cover when other officers are sick. It is difficult to know what the problems are.

An internal report prepared and highlighted in the exclusive in the Irish Press yesterday indicated a number of major conclusions which I will go through briefly. It was found that despite the introduction of this very costly system the manual records kept in the 43 Garda stations have not been eliminated. It seems incredible that gardaí are still manually recording detail with this expensive computer and communications system beside them. In small Dublin stations the system is being used for very few incidents. Garda management are being denied the many benefits of the system, not to mention what the taxpayer and the citizen are being denied as a result. Little use is made of the system on the performance of individual gardaí for merit purposes or for distributing the workload. There is very limited reporting of exceptional incidents with a view to finding the reasons behind the figures. There are problems caused by gardaí not properly entering details onto the system. There seems to be many problems, all of them contributing to a breakdown in what is a very expensive and up-to-the-minute facility.

It is the ordinary gardaí from district sergeant level down who have to operate this system, but what level of consultation was there with them before the system was drawn up? That seems to be a major bugbear, that this expensive white elephant was put in place without the members who were to work it to make it operative being consulted in the first instance. Whatever the reason for the present unsatisfactory situation, there is a strong obligation on the Minister and on the Minister of State to clear up the mess and ensure that this appalling waste of public money ends without delay.

Minister of State at the Department of Justice (Mr. N. Treacy)

I am pleased to have the opportunity of responding to Deputy McCartan's question because the subject matter has, I believe, become the source of some confusion following various public comments made yesterday and again this morning. I would like to begin by quoting the full text of a statement issued yesterday afternoon by my colleague, the Minister for Justice, Deputy Burke, which, so far as I am aware, has not been carried in full by the media. The statement was as follows:

Like all systems involving the use of advanced modern technology, certain teething problems were experienced when the computerised Command and Control System in Dublin became operational.

The Garda authorities immediately took the sensible course of asking the Operations Research Unit (ORU) of the Department of Finance to examine the matter. Last October the ORU conducted a survey and, on the basis of this survey, submitted a report to the Garda Commissioner in January.

This report, which has been quoted from, selectively, in a newspaper article today, indicated that the difficulties arising had to do not with the equipment itself, but with its use and with factors completely outside the system.

One of the major issues, for example, was that about 40 per cent of calls made on the system were in response to security alarms at business and other premises, 99 per cent of which were false alarms, attributable, for the most part, to faults in those alarms. I have already announced in the Dáil that I have approved the introduction of a new policy aimed at reducing the incidence of such calls.

There are some residual complaints from Gardaí about the system, but, again, there is nothing very surprising in the fact that staff, whether in the public or private sector, tend, at times, to be critical of changes which are made possible by technology. This is especially true when, as a by-product of better service to the public, the technology also enhances the capacity of mangement to monitor the daily performance of staff much more closely than was possible heretofore.

All of the residual concerns voiced by Gardaí are currently the subject of examination by a Chief Superintendent with a view to identifying what further measures may be necessary in order to ensure that the public derives the full benefits which the new Command and Control System is undoubtedly capable of producing.

That concludes the Minister's statement. However, there are certain points which I would like to stress.

First, the Department of Finance report referred to in the Minister's statement was not concerned with the Garda radio network as a whole but with the computerised command and control system in the Dublin Metropolitan area which cost, not £266 million as one might assume from various comments made, but approximately £2.6 million.

Secondly, the report did not deal with the actual system itself, technology or its technological capacity at all but with its use. The Department of Finance, who prepared the report, are anxious that this point should be stressed and in fact the report itself specifically states that what the expert analysis was concerned with was, and I quote: "the use which was being made of the Command and Control System and the amount of information which was being produced with a view to seeing what improvements could be made". The report also stated, and again I quote "It was decided that no useful purpose would be served in making a technical assessment of the computer system in this study". Finally, and most importantly, in a paragraph headed "The Way Forward" the Finance report states that "The major problem currently confronting the Command and Control System is the difficulty in improving the level of acceptance of this system at all ranks and thereby improving the amount and quality of data entered".

The third point I would like to make is that the report found that, while there were instances in which some delays occurred in responding to calls, these were relatively isolated and that the average response time was excellent and in line with what was expected of the system. It is important that people in the community who feel vulnerable should know this and should not be frightened into believing that the new system somehow marks a disimprovement in the capacity of the gardaí to respond. The contrary is the case. The fact that there were delays at all is of course a matter which requires attention and it was precisely because of this that the Garda authorities sought expert advice in the first place from the Department of Finance. As the Minister for Justice stated yesterday, a chief superintendent is already engaged in the task of resolving any residual difficulties that remain.

The fourth point that I think needs to be stressed is that this matter has an industrial relations side to it. Again, there is nothing very surprising in this; it is clear that one of the tasks of staff associations — whether in the public or the private sector — is to represent the interests of members who naturally become a little uneasy when management acquires the capacity, through technology, to supervise day-to-day performance more closely. Dealing with the industrial relations aspects of technological change is obviously a matter of importance. There are however various fora in which matters of this kind can be dealt with — in fact the chief superintendent who is now looking at the residential problems I have mentioned is working with a committee who include staff representation. I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not for one moment suggesting that all of this boils down simply to an industrial relations gripe — far from it — but I am saying that there are industrial relations considerations, that there are ways of dealing with these matters and that it is preferable that they be dealt with through well-tried channels rather than here in this House.

Finally, I think it is important to make the point that today's debate arises basically from the fact that an official document intended for internal guidance on improving the use made of the system came into the hands of a newspaper reporter, that it is possible that somebody released the document to secure unethical publicity and that the more publicity that is given to the matter the better we may, unwittingly, serve the purposes of the wrongdoer — whatever those purposes happened to be.