Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
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398. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if international best practice was met when deciding that exercises involving the principal response agencies are sufficient mitigation work to warrant the possibility of not classifying areas with Seveso sites as high risk or very high risk as proposed in Keeping Communities Safe, pages 59, 93 and 115, and his views that this adequately reflects the provisions of the new Seveso directive, Directive 2012/18/EU. [53967/13]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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It is a statutory function of each individual fire authority, under Section 10 of the Fire Services Act 1981, to provide a fire service in its functional area, including the establishment and maintenance of a fire brigade, the assessment of fire cover needs, the provision of a premises and the making of such other provisions as it considers necessary or desirable.

The Keeping Communities Safe (KCS) policy document, which I published as national policy in February 2013, sets out standards and norms for developing and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of fire safety and fire services in Ireland. KCS is based on the international paradigm of Risk Management which addresses the critical elements of fire prevention and fire protection as well as response. The Risk Management approach, which is described in Chapter 2 of KCS, generally involves five stages including identifying hazards and evaluating the risks these hazards pose; mitigating these risks by trying to reduce the probability of the event occurring and/or its consequences if it does occur; planning and preparing to deal with the risk; responding to an event; and reviewing events with a view to learning for the future.

The use of an ‘area risk categorisation’ system is central to the approach in KCS which is being applied across the country by all fire services. This will result in fire station areas being graded across five bands from very high to very low risk categories. The fire service approach to risk management in an area, including response capacity in terms of numbers of fire appliances and fire crews, is reviewed on the basis of this risk categorisation. It is the predominant risk in an area that defines the risk categorisation. However, KCS provides that in some cases with extensive or widely varying station grounds, it may be appropriate to sub-divide the station area and have different risk categories.

KCS sets out the approach and criteria for use by local fire service management in arriving at decisions on the risk category to be assigned to a station area, one of which is: "Extent of Individual Special Hazards (e.g. Institutional, Educational, Industrial, Large Scale Retail/Commercial, SEVESO,Places of Public Assemblyetc.)”.The overall approach to undertaking the Area Risk Categorisation Process relies on available data including census data and Risk-Based Approach Reports based on actual fire service activity, the use of local knowledge and operational intelligence, previously undertaken Major Emergency Risk Assessments and other available sources. KCS notes that specific hazard sites, such as SEVESO plants, are closely regulated and already the focus of significant risk mitigation work which includes external site response plans and exercises involving the principal response agencies. Buildings or sites which are of special interest because of their scale and importance to a community or region may not therefore of themselves be high risk, and the presence in an area of such facilities would not necessarily raise an area to high risk or very high risk category in the KCS area risk categorisation process.

In accordance with the Framework for Major Emergency Management, which was adopted by Government in 2006, the relevant divisions of An Garda Síochána, the Health Service Executive and the Local Authorities have carried out both individual and joint risk assessments for their functional areas and have prepared Major Emergency Plans, undertaken inter-agency training and carried out exercises on potential emergency scenarios. As part of this process, they have worked collaboratively with SEVESO site operators in accordance with a guidance document which was prepared specifically for this purpose. The central competent authority for the enforcement of the Seveso II Directive is the Health and Safety Authority, while responsibility for the transposition into Irish Law of the new SEVESO Directive (Directive 2012/18/EU) lies with the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.