Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his opening statement. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill, which aims to modernise legislation that dates to the Second World War. That is probably a good litmus test for the need to modernise legislation.

From the outset, I compliment the Civil Defence, both the organisation and the 2,700 volunteers. They do fantastic work. As other colleagues have said, they are an integral part of the fabric of Irish society. They provide huge support for the three principal response agencies - the Garda, the HSE and local authorities - and for charitable and community organisations.

This may be controversial, but perhaps the Civil Defence is modern and effective in what it does because it is not a centralised organisation. There is a huge amount of autonomy given to the 28 Civil Defence teams around the country. They are not overly bureaucratic or overly controlled. They are probably successful not in spite of not being under centralised control but because they are not under centralised control. They have a huge amount of flexibility and latitude at local level. They are completely plugged in to the local, regional and community setup. They have probably rewritten the rule book on professionalism. We generally regard professionals as people who are paid full time. The Civil Defence has proven that one can be professional without being paid full time as a volunteer. Volunteers' professionalism relates to the standards they bring to the table rather than whether they are paid full time.

The thing about Civil Defence is that it always turns up. I have never heard a derogatory comment about the Civil Defence. During a search for a missing person, an incident requiring medical support or a response to a severe weather event, they are always there. The Minister mentioned the responses to Covid-19 and the displacement of Ukrainians, which were commendable responses. I acknowledge that the Civil Defence teams are modernising their operations. Their capabilities are very effective from the point of view of drone technology. They are also very effective from a four-wheel drive point of view - they have their own tracked vehicles - and from a medical perspective. I have been to Ratra House and the college in Roscrea several times. From a medical point of view, they are very impressive in regard to paramedic and pre-hospital training.

Many of the HSE paramedics and advanced paramedics are also double-hatted as Civil Defence members. I do not think many people recognise that. On the Covid-19 response, I want again to double on the fact that they got a medal awarded to them in Croke Park last year. That is an excellent thing to do and that they get some recognition for the excellent service they are providing. There is one organisation which I do not think has got the same level of recognition and that is the Garda Reserve. It has been around for approximately 20 years and its personnel have never received any kind of official medal or recognition for the great work they do. Perhaps he could speak to his Cabinet colleague, the Minister, Deputy Harris, in relation to that.

I have one concern from an operational perspective that I want to highlight. We know what the situation in Ukraine is like at the moment. We know there are concerns over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and that Civil Defence has a significant role in radiation monitoring in this country. I suspect it has not really been updated since the 1980s and Chernobyl, or perhaps Sellafield. We could probably do with dusting off some of those plans, doing an audit of the equipment and making sure people are properly training so that they can carry out air, soil and water sampling. This is not to scare anybody. The fact that they would be carrying out their training would allay a lot of people's fears about having a system in place. The last thing we want to do is be caught in a situation for which we are not prepared. It is a low probability event but one with maximum, indeed catastrophic, impact if something like that happens. The Civil Defence probably needs to make sure it is totally on the ball from a radiation monitoring point of view.

Turning to the Bill itself, in general it is a good Bill. I welcome the fact that a register is going to be established. I caution against making the Civil Defence organisation overly bureaucratic. One of the reasons why it is successful is that it is not bureaucratic. The code of practice is important and the 70:30 funding model is good as well. I throw out two ideas as I wonder about the departmental structure of involving two Departments controlling one agency. As a general rule, that is probably not a good idea. As a general rule, it could be argued that if two people or two organisations are in charge, nobody or no one is really in charge. We might want to consider whether we should put one Department in charge exclusively, that is either the Department of Defence or the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. That is just a consideration.

Second, across the European Union, the phrase "civil protection" is used rather than "civil defence", so if we were looking to align our Civil Defence organisation with its European peers and counterparts, perhaps a renaming or rebranding should be considered. Again, I am not sure what the Civil Defence volunteers' view on that would be but if we are looking at deploying teams overseas from an earthquake point of view, or from a forest fire or disaster relief point of view, perhaps aligning ourselves with our European colleagues might be a good way to go.

In summary, I welcome the Bill. I am a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence so I look forward to further scrutiny on 28 March when the Bill comes before the committee. I make one suggestion that if it is going to be discussed at committee, we might get a Civil Defence officer and a Civil Defence volunteer to turn up as well so we can ask pertinent questions from an operational point of view in order to get the best information possible when it comes to making legislation.

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