ONE OF THE country’s policing watchdogs has claimed that the latest phase of its investigation of garda 999 call handling has not identified any “new issues”. 

An internal garda review previously said that more than 200,000 calls were cancelled over a two-year period between 2019 and 2020. This examination was published by the Policing Authority. 

Today the Policing Authority released a statement stating that it commissioned Derek penman, a former Chief Inspector of Constabulary in Scotland in July 2021.   

The body tasked him to carry out an examination into the circumstances, and impact, of the invalid closure of Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) incidents during 2019 and 2020.

CAD is the system which manages the despatching of calls for help to the public – the Policing authority have claimed that gardaí were erroneously cancelling calls before gardaí got to them. 

Penman provided an interim report to the Authority in November 2021 and a final report in September 2022.

ASeptember 2022 report identified 36 key findings, and 16 recommendations on how the Garda Síochána can improve this service for the future, and avoid a reoccurrence of invalid CAD closures.

The Authority said in a statement today that it continues its oversight of the system and that Penman recently provided an update on the outcome of the additional call listening activity conducted in January and May this year.

The report states that it relates to a small number of calls, eight in total, that were not included within the “Serious Cohort” of incidents provided by the Garda Síochána for the comprehensive Call Recording Sampling Phase conducted in May 2022.

“Mr Penman confirmed to the Authority that he is satisfied that the latest call listening work did not present any new issues, in terms of content and quality, that were not previously identified in his September 2022 review report,” the Policing Authority said today.

The Policing Authority is committed to further engagement with the Garda Síochána to ensure that the recommendations arising from the report are implemented. In this regard, Mr Penman will undertake further work on behalf of the Authority in the last quarter of 2023 to assess the extent to which the 2022 recommendations have been addressed.

The Policing Authority finding does not mention the issue identified by The Journal yesterday into the volume of calls garda despatchers are unable to respond to.

It was revealed that more than 500 calls for help from the public to Dublin’s Garda central control centre had not been responded to at one point on Tuesday evening because there were not enough gardaí available.

It is understood to be an ongoing issue, with garda controllers unable to despatch gardaí to deal with incidents.

The garda’s system is known as Command and Control and based in the city centre. 

It is staffed by gardaí and some civilian call takers. The communication gardaí enter the calls into a computerised system which then assigns the call to units.

Calls are taken in from phone calls to garda stations but also on the 999 system.

This call dispatch system records how many calls have been answered and those gardaí were unable to respond to.

At the end of a shift, command and control then forward on to the oncoming unit any calls that were not responded to – on Tuesday evening at 7pm there were 523 held over individual incidents.

Sources have said that this issue has developed as the amount of available gardaí is not matched with the level of demand for the service.