The Department of Home Affairs says that the 999 telephone line ‘was down for a matter of minutes’ yesterday.

Mark Newey, the head of the communications division for the department, said: ‘In the time that the line was down, nobody dialled 999.’

He said that the cause of the technical difficulty was: ‘An unidentified fault with hardware, technology trips up sometimes, so it was an electronic glitch, but we have fallback procedures which were followed, and the issue has been rectified.

‘The last time something like this happened was about 18 months ago, but when it happens, telecom providers have numbers that people are diverted to in that instance.’