Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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25. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the amount that would be saved by the public Exchequer if there was to be one assistant fire chief in each local authority. [20432/13]

Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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51. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will outline in tabular form, the number of assistant fire chiefs that were employed in local authorities in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 and the cost per year. [20497/13]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 25 and 51 together.

Under Section 159 of the Local Government Act 2001 each City and County Manager is responsible for the staffing and organisational arrangements to carry out the functions within his or her local authority. While the specific information requested in the questions is not available in my Department, I understand that, overall, the number of Senior Fire Officers in local authorities have decreased from 270 in 2008 to 202 in 2012 (a reduction of approximately 25% ) .

The current figure of 202 is made up of 30 chief fire officers, 72 senior assistant chief fire officers, 72 assistant chief fire officers and 28 assistant and graduate fire officers. The highly trained and experienced senior officers provide leadership over a range of specialist safety and emergency management functions and manage delivery of the operational fire service with an annual budget of €260m delivered by 3,200 fire fighters. While generally senior fire officer grades are analogous to local authority engineering grades information regarding the remuneration of senior fire officers in individual local authorities throughout the sector is not available in my Department. Under the changes in service delivery structures contained in the fire services policy document “Keeping Communities Safe” launched in February 2013, there will be a reduction from 30 to 21 (or 33%) in the number of chief fire officers.