Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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316. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the amount his Department spent on the fire services Ctri project in 2019, 2020 and to date in 2021, in tabular form. [43386/21]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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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.  My Department supports fire authorities through general policy setting and preparing legislation, providing a central training programme, issuing guidance on operational and other related matters and providing capital funding for priority infrastructural projects.

The CTrí Project, which is implementing national policy in delivering the next generation of communications and mobilisation systems for local authority fire services, is supported by my Department and is being delivered by a project team within the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management in my Department. While the current three regional communication systems have operated successfully since the early 1990’s, the replacement of first generation technology and developing enhanced resilience for the system is enabling us to establish a single national system using the three current Communications Centres. The core elements of the project are:

- the replacement of mobilisation and communications equipment in all 217 fire stations (complete);

- the development of resilient communication links between fire stations, the communication centres and the data centres (complete);

- the migration from our old analogue radio systems to the Tetra digital radio platform used by other emergency services (complete); 

- the development of a new mobilisation software platform which the three communication centres will use for receipt and processing of fire-related 999/112 calls from the public and dispatch of agreed pre-determined fire service response. This new mobilisation system was brought to "technical go-live" stage and operated for a period in one of the communications centres on 27 July 2021 and will be brought to full live status in all three communications centres through a roll-out programme over the coming twelve months. 

The project has had financial support from the Government via the Fire Services Capital Programme, reflecting the effective collaboration of all local authorities in delivering enhanced public safety. The primary purpose of the project is to improve the quality and resilience of fire services communications across the country, ensuring both that we keep our firefighters safe and in turn, allowing them to continue to deliver safer communities.

My Department provides 100% of the capital funding for the Ctrí project. The amounts provided in each of the years 2019, 2020 and to date in 2021, are set out in the table below.