Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I thank Deputies Lynch and McManus for the comprehensive argument they made last night in support of the Labour Party motion. As someone who lives in Shankill, just two miles from Bray, I have close connections with the community in that town. Therefore, I understand the real sense of shock that was felt in Bray and throughout the country at the untimely and tragic deaths of Brian Murray and Mark O'Shaughnessy while fighting a fire at a disused factory in the town two weeks ago. Having spent many years as a trade union official representing full-time and retained firefighters, I appreciate the work that is done by firefighters.

I hope the families of Brian Murray and Mark O'Shaughnessy will take some consolation from the genuinely warm tributes which were paid to both men during this debate over the past two nights. While there may be differences in opinion among the various parties in the House about how to deal with the broader organisational issues which have been raised by the two deaths, every Deputy from every party acknowledges the heroism of the two men and the absolute dedication to duty they displayed, not just in responding to this fire but also to the many other fires and incidents they were called to deal with during their service with Bray fire brigade.

Death is always tragic, but if there can ever be nobility in death, it is when people lay down their lives to save others. Thankfully, the loss of fire brigade personnel while fighting fires has been a relatively rare phenomenon in this country. Reliance on the fire brigade to deal with a simple chimney fire or to cope with the aftermath of a serious accident is something we take for granted. Our society could not function without knowing there are brave men and women at the other end of a telephone who will respond at a moment's notice and come to our rescue. As Deputy Kathleen Lynch said earlier, the fire service is an essential service.

This is not the first time we have had a shocking fire tragedy in this country. A fire at the Noyeks showrooms in Parnell Street in Dublin in March 1972 killed eight people. The largely forgotten fire at the Central Hotel in Bundoran in August 1980 killed ten people, including five children. Worst of all, and seared on the collective memory of anyone who lived through that period, was the shocking Stardust disaster that took the lives of 49 young people on St. Valentine's night 1981. While we would have had many more such disasters were it not for the courage and commitment of members of the fire service, each of the fires I have mentioned raised questions about the adequacy of our fire service. In each case, there were reviews, reports and recommendations, many of which were never implemented.

The Noyeks fire was followed by the establishment of a working party by the then Minister for Local Government. Large parts of the working party's report, which was published in 1975, were never implemented. The Government established a formal tribunal of inquiry following the Stardust fire. While the tribunal did not reach any conclusions about the origin of the fire that satisfied the relatives of those who died, Mr. Justice Keane produced a number of recommendations that were not implemented. One of the key recommendations was that an inspectorate be established to oversee the fire service, but no such inspectorate exists, 26 years after the Stardust tragedy.

The next major step in efforts to improve the fire service and learn from the lessons of past disasters was the decision in 2001 to ask a consultancy firm, Farrell Grant Sparks, to produce a report on this country's fire services. The report promptly produced by the firm, Review of Fire Safety and Fire Services in Ireland, was submitted to the Department of the Environment and Local Government in January 2002. It was not until February 2005, however, that the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government announced the initiation of the fire services change programme, which was supposed to implement the Farrell Grant Sparks recommendations. The Government refused to implement the key recommendation of that report — the proposal to establish a national fire authority — despite a commitment given during the 2002 general election campaign by the Taoiseach's programme manager that it would do so. In a letter to which Deputy Brian O'Shea has already referred, sent on 10 May 2002 to the secretary of the chief fire officers' association, the Taoiseach's programme manager said:

Fianna Fáil believes that the report's recommendations constitute a balanced package of measures which must be implemented without cherry-picking. Fianna Fáil is committed to this course of action.

The Minister of State, Deputy Dick Roche and Deputy Behan, as well as the Minister of State, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, have again suggested that of course this is a responsibility for the local authorities. The point is that the establishment of a full-time fire service for major centres such as Bray is inextricably bound up with the need to establish a national fire authority because at the end of the day, this comes down to a question of resources.

I cannot put it more eloquently than the way in which the former Minister, Deputy Martin Cullen, put it on 5 May 2004, when he travelled to Wexford and addressed the annual conference of the chief fire officers' association. I quote from his script:

I believe in the need for a national fire authority that provides leadership and direction and delivers an effective national response that local authorities working on their own cannot bring about. It is against this back drop that I will bring to Cabinet firm proposals to seek the establishment of a national fire authority. The authority will be the over-arching body for fire services in Ireland.

Those proposals were never brought to Cabinet or if they were, they were never acted upon and three years later, we have Ministers from that same Department now making the very opposite case.

We must accept the need for fundamental change and reform in the fire service. We must accept that a structure which evolved when Ireland was a very different country, largely agricultural, with relatively small numbers living in towns and cities, can no longer provide us with the level of safety and protection we need. We must end the situation where, as one chief fire officer has put it, the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, has all the power without any of the responsibility. It can effectively walk away from any disaster and lay the blame at the doors of the local authority. We now urgently need a national fire authority that would provide enhanced protection against fire, better training and equipment for all personnel and ensure a consistent level of service across the country. We also need to accept that densely populated areas can no longer rely on part-time or retained fires services to provide the level of protection required. This is not in any way to question the dedication or commitment of the part-time fire fighters who staff the retained fire service. On the contrary, Brian Murray and Mark O'Shaughnessy and the other members of the retained fire service, showed exceptional commitment by ensuring that they were available, often 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to drop everything at a phone call and head off to fight a fire. This they did, for what most of us would regard as a pittance by way of monetary return.

In a modern society, speed of reaction is crucial to a fire alert. The time it takes for a brigade to reach a fire can literally mean the difference between life and death. The extra time of ten or 15 minutes it can take for part-time fire fighters to mobilise means simply that a retained fire service cannot respond with the same speed as a full-time service. There is always a role for the retained service in support of the full-time service.

In a little more than five minutes this House will make a decision on the motion. The decision of this House as a result of the vote, is a vote on a motion that calls for action or a vote for a Government amendment that is about inaction, that is about more reports, that is about noting more progresses and more reviews and so on. The Labour Party motion which is before the House tonight calls for two things — first, the establishment of a national fire authority and, second, the establishment of full-time services in large areas of population such as Bray. We are calling for this because we do not want a repeat of what has happened in Bray and what has happened many times before. We want to see the best possible fire service in this country to protect our people and to provide the highest level of safety for those who work in it. There is no excuse for postponement.

We are calling for no more tonight than what was contained in an official Government report, not once, but three times in the past two decades. Each of those reports was produced as a result of fire tragedies. We are calling for no more tonight than what the former Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government himself said he would do three years ago, namely, establish a national fire authority. The Government can shift the responsibility as often as it likes to the individual local authorities and the Minister of State can wash his hands of it as often as he likes by saying that the Government and the Department have no responsibility as this is a statutory function of the local authorities. The reality is that given the way in which local authorities are financed and the resources that are required to ensure that we have high quality fire services, local authorities will not be able to establish full-time services in the areas in which they are required. As regards the two requirements of a national fire authority and full-time services in the areas of large population concentration, this House has an opportunity tonight to make a decision to establish a national fire authority and to have full-time fire services in areas like Bray or to funk it once again, as was done after every major fire tragedy that has occurred in this country.

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