Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

To add to what my constituency colleague has said, in addition to their loyalty to their group, there is a tremendous sense of loyalty to their local community and the community has a sense of loyalty to the fire service. Not many people in Clare even realise that there is only one full-time fire officer in County Clare and everybody else is part time, with the vast majority of them retained firefighters. There is an increasing professionalisation and it is increasingly difficult to get a mortgage. What worked very well up to recently is no longer working.

I could express my disappointment at the Government's countermotion but more importantly I ask the Minister of State and his ministerial colleague to engage with the issue. Regardless of what the motion and the countermotion are, they should engage with this issue. Could the State afford to provide the level of fire cover that we have now if everybody was to be paid on a full-time basis? I think the answer is clearly "No". The nearest full-time fire service to County Clare is in Limerick city. I do not think the State could shoulder the enormous cost of the expansion in the service that would be required to cover all of County Clare. However, the status quois equally unaffordable because people are not joining the fire service to the extent that this is becoming dangerous. Either way, the status quoit is not sustainable nor is a full-time fire service.

I ask the Minister of State to engage with the management of fire services, rural fire services, retained fire services across the country and also their representatives in the trade union movement. The matter needs to be resolved. There was previously an issue. The former Minister, Joan Burton, was regularly criticised by Sinn Féin and perhaps by the Minister of State, but she did engage with the issue and she found a solution to the issue when there was a problem with retained firefighters and whether they qualified for social welfare benefit or assistance. That was ironed out and I believe the problems that exist now can be ironed out with the political will. The Government has the numbers to win the vote regardless. I ask the Government to engage with firefighters to bring about a solution.

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