Over 200 emergency calls missed due to outage in early hours

BT Communications were unable to handle emergency calls between 1-2.15am last night. Picture: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie

Over 200 emergency calls were missed, and later followed up on, after BT Ireland suffered an outage in the early hours of this morning and were unable to handle all calls. 

The Government's Environment Climate and Communications was notified this morning that BT Communications Ireland Ltd (BTCIL) were unable to handle emergency calls between 1am and 2.15am – during which time 227 calls were made. 

BTCIL has a contract with the Government to deliver the emergency call answering service. It said gardaí followed up on all of the missed reports. 

Minister Ossian Smyth said the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has sought a detailed and comprehensive report from BTCIL on the incident. 

Minister of State Ossian Smyth said his department has sought a report on the incident. Picture: Maxwells

He said that the immediate priority is ensuring that there is no risk of a similar incident in future. 

"The department will establish the precise circumstances that gave rise to the service outage and then, in consultation with its legal advisers, determine the consequences under the contract," he added.