THERE HAS been no interest to date in Ireland in the implementation of a Europe-wide missing children’s helpline, first advertised almost two and a half years ago.
ComReg have confirmed that, despite national advertisements seeking interested parties to run the hotline on August 27th, 2007, not a single expression of interest has been received to date.
The hotline is one of several “116” numbers, which the EU want to harmonise. The hotline has been assigned to service providers in 12 member states and is up and running in 11 of them: Belgium, Denmark, Greece, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia.
The ISPCC, which runs Childline and which was assigned to run a separate EU children’s helpline on 116111, has said that, while it sees the importance of the missing children’s hotline, it cannot fund the service.
“The ISPCC recognises the importance of and need for the 116000 European harmonised number for missing children, but due to the ongoing financial cost of operating this number we are not in a position to offer this service at present.
“We have a level of expertise in operating 24-hour helpline services with Childline and have put proposals forward in how we could manage the 116000 number but to date we have not been successful in securing funding,” said Childline manager Lloyd Byrne.
As part of reforms to the EU’s regulatory framework for electronic communications adopted in November, a new provision on 116 numbers has been inserted in the Universal Service Directive.
It specifies that member states should make every effort to ensure that citizens have access to a service operating a hotline to report cases of missing children on the 116000 hotline. Member states have until May 25th, 2011, to incorporate these new requirements into their national laws.
A spokeswoman for the European Commission said it would “not hesitate to launch infringement procedures” against states which do not fulfil their obligations for the 116 numbers.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Communications said that, while the 116000 number was not in operation, that it was important to note that Ireland had fully implemented the EU-wide 112 emergency service numbers.