Gardaí’s Dublin call centre at breaking point

THE Garda emergency call centre in Dublin is approaching “crisis point”, a Garda representative has claimed.

A report in the Garda Review, the official journal of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), said the unit had 26 fewer staff than it did in 2004.

The Command and Control centre deals with all 999 and 112 phone calls in Dublin and is responsible for dispatching patrol cars to calls. The centre handles around 2,000 incidents a day.

These incidents range from serious road accidents, robberies, assaults and thefts, to less serious matters such as complaints about noise or misbehaviour by youths.

“While everywhere has a manpower shortage, it became particularly acute here,” said Garda Alan Greally, who has worked in the centre for seven years and is the district representative for the GRA.

He said the job was too stressful in summer. “At other times we can get by with members working overtime, but when people start taking annual leave it is unworkable.

“On a Saturday night in the summer we might have as few as three people taking calls — yet there are 20 people feeding these calls through to us. It is a bottleneck.

“It is coming to a crisis point. Members are unwilling to work two or three divisions, but this is an emergency centre, it is the first place that should be effectively staffed.”

There are 64 members working in the centre, 26 fewer than at the end of 2004.

When a competition was held in 2006 to fill the vacancies, no one applied — reflecting the attractiveness of the job among gardaí.

Garda Eddie Gilbert told the Garda Review there were two problems that hamper and prolong garda response times to emergencies.

One was the speed at which the identity of the caller is established from the switchboard. Second is where callers have poor or no English.

The Garda Public Attitudes Survey 2007 found 20% of 999 callers waited longer than ten seconds to be answered, while 36% said they had to wait longer than 15 minutes for a patrol car to arrive. In 12% of cases there was no response, although one was not always needed.

The centre is being considered for “civilianisation”. Many gardaí would be glad to leave, as they have been waiting years for transfers. But they are concerned civilians will not have the knowledge or skills.

“You might be talking to a potential suicide victim and yet you have six or seven emergency calls flashing on your screen,” said Garda Greally.

“They are unknown in their seriousness; the pressure is on to take those calls. Do you put a suicide call on hold?”

A spokesman for the Garda Press Office said there was a formal mechanism through which garda associations could raise issues of concern with management.