Safety concerns over radio system

A  communications system that can allegedly distort heart pacemakers and a range of other life-saving medical equipment, is being installed by the Garda.

The new digital form of radio communications, designed to the international Tetra standard, is already in use by gardaí in Dublin and, if successful, is to replace the existing national Garda Radio Network.

The system, which was introduced last January, is expected to replace existing systems on an incremental basis by 2003 at a cost of about €100 million.

It already allows gardaí on patrol in Dublin instant access to the main Garda pulse computer, providing a range of information based on details such as car registrations, names and addresses.

It also allows mobile Garda patrols secure communications with other patrols directly, without the need to relay messages through a central control.

A version of Tetra, called Barracuda, is being installed by the PSNI in Northern Ireland while in Britain, a version called Airwave is in place. Tetra systems are in use in a further 50 states throughout the world.

But according to a new report, studies undertaken by the Medical Devices Agency, a British government safety regulator, found that some Tetra handsets interfered with medical equipment from as far away as three metres. In half of these cases, the effect would have had a "direct impact" on patient care. A spokesman for the Medical Devices Agency was unavailable for comment yesterday.

According the report, to be published in next Saturday's edition of the British weekly New Scientist, Tetra systems can disrupt heart pacemakers, interfere with defibrillators and stop ventilators. Interference with such critical machinery could have fatal consequences for a patient.

The benefits of Tetra systems are that they are less prone to interference and eavesdropping, operating at a frequency of 400 megahertz, which is below the microwave frequency used by mobile phones. However the Tetra system is also said to be correspondingly harder to filter out and thus more likely to cause interference in other machines.

An Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulator (ODTR) spokeswoman reiterated that no licence had been issued in the Republic and added the only Tetra system in the State was a pilot network set up for testing.

"As yet the ODTR has not seen the (New Scientist) report but will review the issues when the report is available", said the spokeswoman.

In Northern Ireland, the PSNI said it was aware of the concerns about Tetra Systems but Britsh Home Office research had not borne out the concern. Police forces in the UK, where the Airwave Tetra system is in place, said there was much concern when the system was installed but that Home Office testing had not found serious difficulties.