I recently adopted and published a policy document entitled, Keeping Communities Safe, KCS, which sets the future direction of fire services in Ireland. This is intended to ensure that Ireland continues to manage its fire risk effectively and that our success in reducing fire fatalities, at their lowest level for four decades in 2012, continues. KCS includes, inter alia, the re-alignment of structures to deliver effective fire services. This provides for fire services to remain as a local authority function, but service delivery is to be reshaped from the current 30 fire services to 21, with 14 single fire authorities and seven shared services. Longford/Westmeath, including Athlone Fire Authority, is included among the shared services.
There is significant experience among fire authorities of delivering aspects of their services on a shared service basis. This experience, coupled with the work already underway to integrate fire services in Tipperary, Limerick and Waterford, will provide a solid basis for developing an appropriate model of shared services for fire authorities, based on populations in the range of 120,000 to 200,000.
KCS is based on a risk management approach, which addresses the critical elements of fire prevention, protection and response. Each fire service is currently undertaking an initial risk categorisation process for its functional area in line with the provisions of KCS. In order to maintain local political accountability for fire services to the community, section 26 of the Fire Services Acts provides that it is a reserved function of local authorities, which maintain a fire brigade, to adopt fire and emergency operations plans indicating the provision made in respect of organisation, appliances, equipment, fire stations, training, operational procedure and any such matters as may be relevant. The risk categorisation process and the emerging best practice models mentioned above will help inform future local decision-making in this regard.
On the issue of calls for assistance in cases involving cardiac arrest, arrangements for the receipt of, and response to, emergency calls when medical assistance is required are matters in the first instance for the HSE/Department of Health. It is not policy currently to have fire service personnel mobilised and deployed to undertake the statutory functions of other agencies, other than in the Dublin area where, by a specific agreement, Dublin Fire Brigade provides an emergency medical service for a large part of the City and surrounding counties.
In relation to 999/112 telephone calls for fire service assistance, callers are questioned by trained operators in the three Regional Communications Centres to determine the nature of the incident, location, whether people are at risk etc. The response to emergency calls is then based on the particular incident type at the location given. The Pre-Determined Attendance, PDA, is an initial turnout dispatched by the Regional Control Centre, but this can be varied by the officer-in-charge in light of available information. The PDAs are set down by the Chief Fire Officer for each fire authority. However, in light of the desire for consistent service provision, there is now detailed, at Appendix A of the KCS policy document, a set of national PDAs for different categories of incident types. It is expected that each fire service will undertake a review in the context of the national PDAs and make any necessary adjustments.
