Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)
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673. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources further to Parliamentary Question No. 143 of 23 September 2015 and given that it is recorded that 975,000 of the 2,100,000 calls made to the emergency call answering service are referred to the emergency services, what happens with the balance and why are they not referred to the relevant emergency service. [45843/15]

Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)
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The Emergency Call Answering Service (ECAS) responds to all calls to 112/999 in the State in under one second. Having identified the nature of the emergency and the location, calls are connected to the correct Emergency Service, on average, in under 6.5 seconds.

The remaining calls are filtered and not forwarded to the Emergency Services. The majority of filtered calls occur where the caller does not speak to the ECAS operator, or where the number is dialled accidentally. Misdialled calls, children playing or abusive calls are also filtered out by ECAS Operators. This is to ensure the Emergency Services can concentrate their efforts on genuine and intended emergency calls.