Mr. Mark Toland:

Most police jurisdictions have moved to a small number of control rooms for emergency calls and non-emergency calls. Most jurisdictions, including Scotland and the PSNI, have a 101 system the public can use to call a designated, dedicated control room. Currently, people here ring their local district station. Sometimes there is one person there dealing with the counter and answering the phone. This is not an ideal system as these people have ten or 12 other things to deal with. My experience is that public complaints reduce considerably when police services move towards a control centre which answers calls quickly. Most members of the public do not expect a police officer to arrive immediately for something non-serious, and providing people's phone calls are answered and they are told their complaint has been noted, most people are happy. However, currently phones ring out and the telephony system is not great. Also, the gardaí people are ringing are doing two or three other jobs. Not to criticise them, they do not have the time to speak to the public to get to the bottom of the problem and to deal properly with the inquiry.