‘Technical issue’ to blame for 999 calls not being answered, BT Ireland says

An “internal technical issue” at BT Ireland led to more than 200 emergency 999 or 112 calls not being answered in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the operator said on Wednesday.

Department of Communications officials were notified about the emergency call service outage between 1am and 2.15am on Tuesday.

The outage resulted in 227 people who called the phoneline being unable to reach emergency operators.

In a statement following the incident, BT Ireland said the fault was not malicious and the service was restored soon afterwards.

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“We liaised with gardaí, providing them with the list of callers so that they could call them directly and offer help. We apologise unreservedly to any caller who may have been affected by this service issue,” a spokesman said.

BT Ireland has operated the Emergency Call Answering Service on behalf of the Department of Communications for more than12 years.

The company said that during that time it had met the standards set out in the contract. “It is a responsibility that we take with the utmost seriousness, and are working with DECC to ensure a technical error of this nature does not occur again.”

Minister of State with responsibility for procurement Ossian Smyth has sought a detailed report from BT Ireland on the outage.

In a statement, the department said the “immediate priority” was to ensure there was “no risk of a similar occurrence in the future”.

Mr Smyth said the department is to establish “the precise circumstances that gave rise to the service outage and then, in consultation with its legal advisers, determine the consequences under the contract”.

The current contract with BT Ireland to run the 999 and 112 call answering service was signed in early 2018, following a competitive bidding process. The contract is due to expire at the end of 2025.