Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am taking this Topical Issue on behalf of the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy O'Donnell. The provision of a fire service in its functional area, including the establishment and maintenance of a fire brigade, the assessment of fire cover needs and the provision of fire station premises, is a statutory function of individual fire authorities under the Fire Service Acts 1981 and 2003.

The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage supports fire authorities by establishing policy, setting national standards for fire safety and fire service provision, providing a central training programme, issuing guidance on operational and other related matters and providing capital funding for priority infrastructural projects and the procurement of essential front-line fire appliances, ancillary vehicles and equipment.

Fire services are provided in Ireland by local authorities in accordance with the provisions of the Fire Services Acts 1981 and 2003. Under this legislation, 31 local authorities provide fire prevention and fire protection services for communities through 27 service delivery structures. Local authority fire services are delivered by approximately 3,300 local authority staff engaged at 217 fire stations nationwide with 16 of these stations being staffed by full-time firefighters, a further four having a mix of full-time and retained firefighters, and 197 being staffed by retained firefighters.

Following the boundary extension of Cork city in May 2019, the retained fire station at Ballincollig, which was previously under the auspices of Cork county fire service, was incorporated into the Cork City Council fire service. I understand that following a recruitment competition, a number of the city council's retained firefighters from Ballincollig fire station were successful in securing whole-time positions in the council's fire service. This resulted in vacancies in the retained fire service at Ballincollig. As an interim measure, Cork City Council deployed a crew of whole-time firefighters from the fire brigade headquarters in Anglesea Street to respond calls in the Ballincollig station area while a recruitment process got under way to fill the retained firefighter vacancies in Ballincollig.

The prioritisation of work and effective management of all resources is, in the first instance, a matter for the fire authority, based on its assessment of risk, needs and resources. In relation to the staffing requirements in each local authority, under the Local Government Act 2001, it is the responsibility of each chief executive to employ such staff and to make such staffing, funding, recruitment and organisational arrangements as may be deemed necessary for the purposes of carrying out the functions of his or her local authority.

It was the determination of Cork City Council following an assessment by senior fire service management that the interim measure of placing a whole-time crew at Ballincollig fire station was a significant overprovision of fire service cover from a risk assessment perspective, and could not be sustained. The average number of calls per week for the period was four, categorising this as C2 in terms of risk profile, which is substantially below the threshold that would justify whole-time staffing. Consequently, the interim measure was withdrawn and crews currently respond to fire calls in the Ballincollig area from Cork city. Cork City Council has determined this to be the optimal approach given the current constraints in recruiting retained firefighters in Ballincollig.

Following the publication of the Keeping Communities Safe policy document in 2013, which set national norms, standards and targets for the provision of safe and effective fire services in Ireland, fire authorities were requested to undertake an initial area risk categorisation process for their functional area using a process set out in Keeping Communities Safe and to prepare a short report on the process and outcomes. The area risk categorisation process resulted in the area to which the first response is sent by each fire station, known as the "fire station ground", being assigned an area risk categorisation grading.

Over the course of 2014 and 2015, an external validation group, EVG, from the management board of the national directorate for fire and emergency management in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage visited every local authority in the country as part of the first external validation process on area risk categorisation in Ireland arising from implementation of Keeping Communities Safe. This culminated in the publication of the first EVG report entitled, Local Delivery - National Consistency. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage will be conducting a second EVG process, which is due to take place in 2025.

A further capacity review of local authority fire services, Response, Resilience and Recovery - A Review of the Impact of Covid-19 on Irish Fire Services, was also completed in 2020. It reported many strengths and the outstanding commitment and effort of front-line teams, and made recommendations for service development that are now in the final stages of implementation.

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