Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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Question 619: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if he will report on the inclusion of the offence of a learner driver driving without a qualified accompanying driver and L plates on the garda PULSE system; the number of offences of this nature that have been recorded by An Garda Síochána since its inclusion on the PULSE system; the further number of Garda stations which do not have the PULSE system in place; the percentage of the total number of Garda stations this represents; the reason there is an ongoing delay with the full roll-out of PULSE to all Garda stations; the amount that has been paid to consultants over the past ten years for the establishment and introduction of the PULSE system; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30681/09]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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The Garda Síochána Act 2005 makes provision for the compilation and publication of crime statistics by the Central Statistics Office, as the national statistical agency, and that office has established a dedicated unit for this purpose. I have requested the CSO to provide the statistics sought by the Deputy directly to him.

Regarding the PULSE system I am informed by the Garda authorities that the number of Garda stations on the PULSE network has been increased to 347 locations including all Divisional, District Headquarters and Garda stations operating on a 24 hour basis. This equates to approximately half (49.4%) of the total number of 703 Garda locations nationwide, and over 85% of all incidents are captured at these locations.

There is no ongoing delay with the rollout of PULSE to all Garda Stations. Indeed, it was never envisaged by Garda Authorities that PULSE would be available at every location. The extension of the PULSE system to additional locations is reviewed on an ongoing basis by Garda management and additional stations are added to the network on a case by case basis as and when business requirements dictate. The Deputy will also be aware that the Garda Information Services Centre (GISC), which is based in Castlebar, allows Gardaí from both networked and non-networked stations to log the information over the telephone with the GISC without the need to return to their station, thus releasing Garda resources for visible, frontline policing across our communities.

The total development cost of the PULSE project was €61.3 million and covers the period up to the final release of the system which was rolled out in 2001. In addition, the annual maintenance and upgrade costs for PULSE from 2001 to the end of 2006 totalled €64.39 million. By way of background, the figure of €64.39m above includes replacement of the Pulse hardware and major upgrades to the PULSE software as part of the Garda Pulse stabilisation programme which was completed in 2006. In addition, a range of upgrades and modifications have been carried out to the system to support changes arising from new legislation, additional functionality etc. It also includes costs associated with the extension of the PULSE system to new locations and to the set-up of the Garda Information Services Centre (GISC) in Castlebar and the Vetting Unit in Thurles. Contractor costs totalled approximately €40m while €10m was spent on hardware along with €14m for various software licences.

Following the completion of PULSE stabilisation and a programme of maintenance and hardware upgrades in 2006, PULSE was integrated with the Garda National Immigration Bureau Information System (GNIB-IS) and the Fixed Charge Processing System (FCPS) and other niche systems to form a new combined IT system to be referred to as the Garda Information System (GIS). For this reason, from 2007 onwards it is not possible to identify any expenditure specific to PULSE as all maintenance and upgrade work is carried out on the GIS as opposed to individual IT systems.