Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the women and men of the Dublin Fire Brigade. They were like a small army on the plinth in this evening's sunshine. We are all proud of them, given their history - fighting recent hotel fires, the accident on Wellington Quay and the Stardust fire, the memory of which is still fresh in our minds 37 years later. There will be an initiative in Croke Park this weekend to campaign once again for real justice following that fire, which has left a mark on the history of this city and the fire brigade.

When I was a councillor, an expert group was set up in what I believe was an attempt to take the Dublin Fire Brigade out of the control of Dublin City Council dressed up as an examination of the functionality and efficiency of the brigade. Sir Ken Knight was brought over from, I believe, the Manchester region. He was an experienced firefighter who had been knighted for his work and expertise. If memory serves, Dublin City Council spent approximately €100,000 on producing his report, which then sat on a shelf and was never taken down again because Mr. Owen Keegan did not agree with its recommendations. After returning to the system he had worked under in London and beyond, Sir Ken Knight recommended that the efficiencies the Dublin Fire Brigade had achieved with its combined model of paramedics, ambulances and fire engines be applied in Britain because it was such an impressive system. He estimated that he could save approximately £200 million for the British system, but we wasted €100,000 on this expert's report and left it sitting on the shelf to gather dust because Mr. Keegan did not agree with it. As he had done as county manager at Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, he pushed hard to unburden Dublin City Council's budget of the men and women of the Dublin Fire Brigade and their work.

This is an important point when one considers the language. Mr. Keegan came into the council not as a manager, but as a CEO. He started to make decisions that were not about the health and safety of the city or the interests of the men and women of the Dublin Fire Brigade and those whom they served, but about efficiencies and running a corporate entity as opposed to a city with all of its complexities.

The men and women of the Dublin Fire Brigade consistently fought to defend the system and won.

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Thankfully, they are here tonight for this motion. They are here because that system is under attack again.

I welcome the Government's recognition of the role played by Dublin Fire Brigade and its endorsement of the motion. Like Deputy Ó Snodaigh, I am a little worried about what it actually means. The Minister of State acknowledged in her speech, copies of which we will give to the firefighters afterwards, "the National Ambulance Service could not recruit at the level necessary to displace the Dublin Fire Brigade paramedic workforce and so cannot, and will not, take ownership of Dublin emergency ambulance service provision." That is a welcome acknowledgement. Dublin Fire Brigade received 7% of the funding that is used to answer 40% of the calls on a national level. Dublin is home to one third of the country's population and the most complex health and safety issues with which those with responsibility in this regard have to deal probably arise. There is evidence that the number of such issues in the city is going to increase. Earlier, we heard reports of the number of accidents and road fatalities increasing again - year on year and month on month - compared with last year. More importantly, episodes relating to climate change, flooding, wind damage, downed cables, falling trees and sea levels rising are going to cause major problems. Throughout the country, not just in Dublin, we have witnessed the heroism of Dublin Fire Brigade and other firefighters and emergency service personnel during recent flood and storm events. These services are going to be required more and more, not less and less.

In the context of its review, details of which were published in March 2017 and which involved an examination of the progress made in implementing recommendations of pre-hospital emergency care services - in other words, ambulance services - HIQA states:

A key finding of this Review relates to the provision of services in Dublin. HIQA found a high level of risk associated with a lack of collective ambulance capacity and arrangements for call handling and dispatch.

This short, two-page document does not indicate exactly what that teases out but I suspect that the problem with the high level of risk is not associated with the service delivered by Dublin Fire Brigade but rather with the lack of delivery on the part of the HSE. This is not intended as a criticism of the men and women who work in the paramedic ambulance service of the HSE; it is a criticism of the HSE itself. Such criticism is not unusual. In light of the recent scandal relating to CervicalCheck, the HSE is well deserving of criticism. I worry, however, that the criticism is misplaced. The Minister of State indicated that what is proposed is to transfer all ambulance call-taking and dispatch functions to the NEOC such that all such services across the State will be consolidated in one centre. She also said that this is required because the current call-taking arrangements represent an unacceptably high patient safety risk and give rise to delays in the allocation of ambulance resources to patients, including in potentially life-threatening situations. I do not believe that the evidence shows us that this applies to the delivery of service by the men and women of Dublin Fire Brigade. Rather, it applies to the inefficiencies relating to and lack of leadership and, often, mismanagement on the part of the HSE. I want to offer a caution about that.

We live in a society where we sometimes forget to talk to the people who know what they are talking about. I refer to those who are out every day in fire stations, on the streets - where major problems can arise - attending accidents, in houses picking up people who are dying or sick and dealing with the impacts of climate change. Unless we talk to them and hear exactly what they have to say about the changes required - if they are required - and how they can be delivered, then we will run into trouble. We will certainly run ourselves into trouble and towards a lesser standard of service delivery if we rely on what I believe to be a broken HSE. The latter has proven, most recently in its handling and mismanagement of health cases of dying women, that it cannot be trusted. That sounds quite dramatic but I am of the view that before any of this is be implemented, we need to talk in a serious way to the men and women of Dublin Fire Brigade and, indeed, to those who are responsible for operating the National Ambulance Service. My brother, who has since passed away, worked for the service. As somebody who was dedicated to his work, for many years he was frustrated that the workers were never listened to when they put across proposals that might help to deliver a better and more efficient service in order to create a better, safer and healthier city for all.

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