Emergency call centres will create 100 jobs

Up to 100 jobs are to be created at two new emergency call handling centres, it was announced today.

BT Ireland said the posts will be located at Ballyshannon, Co Donegal and Navan, Co Meath after it was awarded a €10m euro contract for the national service.

The two centres are expected to handle up to five million emergency calls from the public every year to be forwarded on to the Garda, fire service, ambulance and Coast Guard.

The service will be staffed by multi-lingual operators who are able to deal with emergency calls from non-nationals living in Ireland, according to Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, speaking at the jobs announcement in Co Donegal.

The first emergency calls are expected to be handled in the centres, at the Ballyshannon IT Centre, Portnason, and at the IDA business park at Athlumney, Navan, in November.

BT Ireland won the five-year contract from Eircom, which currently operates the Emergency Calling Answering Service (ECAS) from Dublin and Mullingar.

An Eircom spokesman said there will be no extra jobs lost at the company, which last week announced plans to lay-off 1,200 people, as a result of the lost contract.

Chris Clark, chief executive officer of BT Ireland, which has run the emergency call service in the North for more than 60 years, said: “We are very proud to have been selected by the government to bring our expertise to bear in Ireland and provide such a critically important service.”