Ms Helen Hall:

It can also impact on court appearances. If one does not have, for example, those four calls to the Garda about this incident and this particular premises, it may make it more difficult to get a protection or a barring order or anything else. It is not just necessarily about the crime that has been committed. One of the things that we are encouraging An Garda Síochána to do is on that adverse impact, which is wider than just the prosecution. It is about the follow-up, as the Vice Chairman has correctly said, but is also whether the person would be happy to call the Garda again, if that person had already managed to pluck up the courage to dial 999.

Another residual concern on this is that many people in rural areas do not dial 999 but dial their local Garda station. That is one of the challenges for An Garda in that we may not know, as the Garda stations are not linked into the CAD 999 service. That is another risk that we know the Commissioner is looking at and is trying to resolve in a way that will reduce the incidents where somebody dials into their local Garda station and it is not then recorded. A great deal of work has to be done on our side and on the Garda side in that regard.