John Paul Phelan (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State. I raise the question of the inadequate facilities available at the fire station in Graiguenamanagh, County Kilkenny. The station is a workplace for 12 firemen. It houses two fire tenders and covers an area that extends across south-east Kilkenny and south Carlow, which is a very large catchment area, much of it sparsely populated. The problem from a service provision viewpoint is that the facility is hopelessly inadequate in this day and age. The original building was constructed in the 1940s and an extension was built about 30 years ago, which houses the second tender. The fire service in Graiguenamanagh owns a third vehicle, an off-road vehicle, which is parked immediately adjacent to the fire station. There is no land surrounding the station which is located on the street in Graiguenamanagh.

The difficulty with the existing station is that there are no facilities for training. While there are pumping facilities available on the Barrow in Graiguenamanagh for the firemen to do some of their training routines, no such facilities are available for much of the other work they must do such as working with ladders or, in particular, cutting up cars. A large part of fire service work nowadays is concerned with the aftermath of car accidents. Unfortunately, for training purposes firemen in Graiguenamanagh have to go to Kilkenny one night per week. That is a problem in that the area is left uncovered from a fire service point of view. I acknowledge that significant work has been done and money has been invested in upgrading a number of fire stations in the Carlow and Kilkenny area during the course of the last few years. Graiguenamanagh is one of the last outstanding fire stations.

Tomorrow afternoon the new Graiguenamanagh relief road will be opened and will be a significant improvement in terms of traffic movement in and around the town of Graiguenamanagh. Given that the county council is in possession of a large parcel of eight to ten acres of land on the new road, perhaps an acre of ground could be provided in conjunction with the Department for the provision of a much needed new fire station to be operated successfully out of Graiguenamanagh to cover the south Carlow and south east Kilkenny areas.