Tánaiste announces up to 50 new jobs for Ballyshannon

An Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan T.D., has today (Monday, May 18^th) announced the location and building of an Emergency Call Answering Service (ECAS) in Ballyshannon.

The concession agreement was awarded to BT Ireland following a public procurement process. The service will result in employment for up to 100 people with approximately 50 jobs being located in Ballyshannon.

The Ballyshannon facility will be one of two centres which will process up to five million emergency calls per year. The service represents an investment of more than €10million and will mean that Ballyshannon will be equipped with a state-of-the-art communications centre that will be available on a 24 hour basis, 7 days a week, to react to every emergency in the country.

The centre will accept calls from the public and forward them onto the appropriate control rooms operated by the Gardai, the fire service, ambulance and coastguard respectively.

Recognising the diversity of contemporary Irish society, it is proposed that the centre will be staffed by multi-lingual operators. It is envisaged that the first emergency calls will be handled in a new purpose built call centre to be developed in the Ballyshannon IT Centre, Portnason by late Autumn.

The decision to locate in Ballyshannon was supported by the excellent telecommunications infrastructure where use will be made of the fibre-optic Metropolitan Area Network (MAN).

Speaking at the announcement of the ECAS service, the Tánaiste said: “I am looking forward to the development of new services to enhance the safety of the citizens of Ireland whereby mobile location information will be made available in real time to the emergency services. This will mean they will be assisted in reaching individuals who are unable to give their location details.

My colleague, Minister Eamon Ryan has sought to make greater use of modern technology in providing vital services such as ECAS, here today we see the tangible result. I’m also particularly pleased to see new highly-skilled jobs being delivered to South Donegal.”

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For further information:

Sean Perry, Press Adviser 087 9105013