The Vice President of the Garda Representative Association (GRA) has called for clarity and more detail on an internal garda investigation which found that hundreds of 999 calls to gardaí in 2019 and 2020 were cancelled before there was a proper policing response.
Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne, the GRA's Brendan O'Connor said his members "do not identify" with what he described as a "narrative" that surrounds discussion on this matter.
The inquiry, which is ongoing, is examining more than 3,000 cancelled 999 calls to gardaí about domestic violence, missing persons or health issues. It has found that over 600 such calls to gardaí in 2019 or 2020 were cancelled before a proper policing response.
More than 300 victims whose calls were not properly handled have been contacted to date, but gardaí said so far no adverse consequences have been identified.
The investigation began when gardaí discovered that 999 emergency calls about domestic violence, missing persons and health concerns had been cancelled before there was a proper policing response.
Yesterday, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said gardaí did not provide the standard of service to victims of domestic abuse that is required and he apologised to them. He said that when some of them called for garda help "they did not always receive the service they are entitled to expect".
Mr O'Connor said today that he was confident that decision-making by members of the GRA was appropriate.
"I don't understand how any 999 call that will be given to me wouldn't be dealt with appropriately," he said.
"We are all aware of the checks and balances. We don't dispute the figures, but certainly speaking to people who work in control rooms and dispatching units, we are quite confident that the decision making that our members were making was actually quite appropriate and withstands scrutiny."
Mr O'Connor said he is "not clear" on what the Garda Commissioner apologised for yesterday and he said members take issue with the "suggestion that members would be reckless with public safety".
"For some reason there's a narrative that people, members of the public, vulnerable citizens victims' people in danger, picked up the phone and dialed 999 and the guards didn't respond," he said.
"We don't understand and don't identify that that situation could arise."
He added that his members "want to get to the bottom of this", and he said that the assessment of the recordings of calls will provide further detail.
A former member of the Policing Authority has said that "we'll never know the full extent" of the cancelled 999 calls issue.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, Vicky Conway said: "I think there's an enormous amount still to come. This was just the initial phase.
"It was only a very partial investigation looking at a particular crime set in a particular time frame."
The associate professor of law at DCU said that she is not surprised by the revelations.
"In many ways there's nothing new about this," she said.
"We know from global research that police culture leads to incidents like domestic violence being handled quite poorly by police and the inspectorate report of 2014 would have confirmed a lot of this.
"There were serious issues raised then about the call recording and response system."
Ms Conway added that she has spoken to many people affected by the issue.
"This is not news to thousands of people in Ireland who regularly have this experience.
"I would hear a lot of people saying, 'I called months ago and I'm still waiting for a reply'.
"And I suspect we'll never know the full extent of this because it will be really difficult to survey all calls to assess the extent to which these were cancelled or responded to poorly."
