Prison Service to roll out radio system

THE Prison Service is to start rolling out a hi-tech digital radio system in the country’s jails next month.

The Garda Síochána has already installed the Tetra digital network and the HSE ambulance service is also due to bring it online next month.

The system provides for secure internal communications and also allows the different services to talk to each other, if necessary, particularly in cases of emergencies.

“The advantages of Tetra are a digitally secure radio service which offers a high degree of confidentiality to all users and also has a ‘cross service’ communication facility,” said a Prison Service spokesman.

He said the system required capital funding of €1.8 million. A further €1.9m is being set aside for annual operating costs.

The Prison Service, like the Garda, pay for the phones and for use of the system. Tetra Ireland, made up of Eircom, Motorola and Sigma Wireless, maintains the technology.

The Prison Service spokesman said it should take just over two months to bring the system online across the institutions.

“The introduction is planned to begin September 15 and the planned completion date is November 27,” he said and the Prison Service Escort Service was due to go live on October 13.

This will be particularly useful as it will allow prison officers on escort duty immediately to alert gardaí of any escapes or violent attacks. The same is also true in the event of a disturbance or riot in a prison.

“The system will have direct communication with Gardaí.” confirmed the Prison Service spokesman. “This system will enhance security and expedite the response in the event of an emergency in a prison or involving an escort.”

The spokesman said the mobile phone-blocking technology being rolled out across prisons would not interfere with Tetra.

Asked what staff would receive a phone, he said handsets would be allocated on an “operational needs basis from day to day”.

He would not comment on what measures were in place to prevent prisoners getting their hands on a Tetra phone, only to state that “appropriate measures” were in place.

Promised for 10 years to the Garda, the Tetra system appears to work very well.

It replaced a dilapidated analogue system which didn’t work in much of the country and could be listened into easily by criminals with radio scanners.

The system started in some Dublin divisions on June 16 and is now operational in all of Dublin. There should be a national system in place by mid-2010.

Chief Superintendent Eamon Murray, of Garda Telecoms section, told the Garda Review: “To date all feedback on the system has been positive and the deployment has been very successful.”