THE POLICING AUTHORITY has said gardaí are continuing to cancel and misclassify 999 calls despite efforts being made to stop the practice. 

The authority said it has been made aware of more incidents of cancelling emergency calls in the last week. 

The authority said these further issues “represent a serious concern” and “raise questions about the appropriateness of management and cancellation of computer-aided dispatch (CAD) incidents/999 calls.

The authority said it is seeking to understand how these issues have persisted despite the “intense focus on this matter since it came to light and to establish how remedial measures may have been circumvented or their intention frustrated”.

The latest cancelled calls are in addition to the further 53 calls identified by Commissioner Drew Harris at the last Policing Authority meeting last month. 

The latest incidents will be discussed in detail with the Commissioner at a special, live-streamed, public session of the next Authority meeting on 28 October.

Earlier this year, it emerged that more than 200,000 calls were cancelled over a two-year period between 2019 and 2020, the ongoing garda review this year found, with 23,000 of those classed as ‘priority’ calls. Three thousand of these calls related to domestic violence.

While many of those cancellations were found to be valid cancellations or duplicates, thousands – including a significant number of calls relating to domestic abuse – were incorrectly cancelled.