Mr. Seán Hogan:

It is an interesting issue which was raised when the fire service was reviewed in 2011 and 2012 when the possibility of moving to a national service was considered in considerable depth. However, the decision was made, as conveyed in the report, to stick with the local authority service. There is synergy in having the service provided by local authorities with local decision making rather than having a national quango. Local authorities make decisions on the location of fire stations and put up the funding for them. They must now benchmark themselves against national standards, but it is not a matter of the Custom House telling them they do not need a fire station in a particular place because it would not be busy enough. Local politicians get to make this decision. The danger in having a national service is that this local decision-making is removed. I am very aware that Scotland has moved from a service provided by the local authorities to a national system and it would be fair to say the jury is still out, but it came with a price tag. The opening shot was to cut the cost of fire services by £30 million, which was a big ask because staff pay accounted for 80% of the cost of fire services and was not an overhead. In Scotland there is now a single chief fire officer, but there are the same number of structures required. There is one Garda Commissioner, but we have chief superintendents who correspond to chief fire officers. There are 200 senior fire officers who provide a huge range of services. In the past ten years the fire service has led in major emergency management in local authorities. I have no doubt that the response to the flooding last winter stemmed directly from the work done and led by the fire service on behalf of the local authorities. It has enabled them to work with the Garda, the HSE and everybody else. There are 200 senior fire officers, including 27 chief fire officers, who provide a huge range of services, including specialist services which I will be happy to list, if the committee wants me to do so. It is fashionable to attack senior fire officers, but we need a structure to manage services and we have a good structure in place. We have a lean service in that the number went from 270 to 200, but the number of fire fighters did not fall during the tough times.