Emergency 999 calls decrease by almost 100,000 on last year

THE number of emergency 999 calls has fallen by nearly 100,000 so far this year, new figures show.

However, it was not that there were fewer emergencies. The decrease was due to ‘improvements in the system’ in how the calls are handled.

The Commission for Communications Regulation (Comreg) figures show an 8.2% fall in the number of 999 calls placed between January and June compared to the same period last year.

In total, there were 1,064,227 999 calls in that period, which is 97,411 fewer than in 2021. This equates to 5,880 calls a day, down from 6,417 a day last year.

May saw the biggest reduction in the number of calls with a fall of 29,417 to 179,300. June had the next-highest decrease from 199,935 last year to 171,059 this year. Calls in January dropped only 1.1% from 184,347 to 182,302.

A spokesman for Comreg said there was a ‘technical explanation’ in improvements in the system and a reduction in ‘zero duration calls’.

He said: ‘There would be a lot of calls that would have been generated over the network but because it has become more efficient, there has been a substantial reduction in those calls. It is largely explained by that.’

A zero-duration call is when someone terminates the call before it is answered. In the first six months of 2020, the number of calls received was even higher, at 1,176,694. However, in the same period in 2019, there were 1,098,084 calls.

Each 999 call in Ireland is received by the Emergency Call Answering Service before being forwarded to the emergency service required.

Last week, unions representing paramedics raised concerns about the number of unnecessary calls to the service. There have been reports of ambulances being called for issues such as broken nails, cuts while shaving and bad hangovers.