Mr. Mark Toland:

Some divisions in Ireland, particularly in Dublin, have an electronic call recording system whereby if someone dials 999, it is answered by a call taker and they immediately create an electronic record. The minute we have that, there is capacity for supervision, and a sergeant at the end of a tour of duty or the supervisor in that control room should contact that individual member to remind them and ensure it goes on the PULSE incident recording system. We have made a very simple suggestion that the officer gives the number of the PULSE record in order that the call record can be correlated with the PULSE record. That is now starting to happen.

What cannot be legislated for or supervised is where a garda is approached on the street by a member of the public who tells that garda he or she has had his or her wallet stolen or has been a victim of crime. That individual garda must then put that crime on the system.

One of the issues for us concerns the way crimes are allocated for investigation. We have recommended a new model of allocation of crimes for investigation because that garda in the street becomes the investigator if he or she records that crime. If that garda does not record it, it is one less crime he or she has to investigate. That is not a good system so we are recommending specialist investigation units.

Domestic violence was one area that was worrying for me. We saw some shocking examples where a victim had reported an injury and either it did not get on the system in the first place as a crime or was recorded as some other incident but not a crime. That is unforgivable and needs to be dealt with because it is misconduct and failing to report a crime. That is not giving a good service to the public. Sometimes victims have rung up to find out how the investigation of their crime is progressing to find out it was never recorded in the first place. That needs supervision and a new investigation system will stop that because if a garda is going to deal with a domestic violence incident and there is a specialist unit that will investigate that crime, why would he or she not record it? That garda every reason to record it because a specialist unit will investigate it.