Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 31 March 2015
613. Deputy Arthur Spring asked the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government if a risk assessment was conducted on the potential outcomes of the implementation of the national directorate for fire and emergency management Keeping Communities Safe document. [12732/15]
View answerThe policy document Keeping Communities Safe, (KCS) was published in February 2013 by my Department’s National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management. KCS answers calls made from many quarters over a number o f years for national standards to aid consistency in fire services provision by local authorities. Fire services can now be benchmarked against these national standards, using an Area Risk Categorisation process set out in KCS. The KCS development process had the benefit of oversight and international expertise from Strathclyde Fire and Rescue and the overall approach is aligned with international best practice in this field. As well as having statutory duties under the Fire Services Acts, local authorities are governed by other legislation in undertaking their functions. Risk assessments are a statutory requirement for employers under safety, health and welfare at work legislation. As employers, local authorities have appropriate Safety Management Systems in place for their fire services, including risk assessments.
A range of guidance has been developed by the Local Government Management Agency and the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management to support local authority fire services in meeting their statutory obligations. These include:
- Fire Services Ancillary Safety Statement (2007) details Generic Risk Assessments;
- The National Incident Command System (2007) introduced Dynamic Risk Assessment at fire service operations;
- Standard Operational Guidance (issued in a number of tranches from 2010 to 2012) gives Situational Risk Assessments for the range of common incident types attended by fire services; and
- Additional guidance, titled Managing Safety in Fire Services, was issued in 2014 to align safety, health and welfare provisions in fire services with general local authority policy.
The above documents provide the basis for fire services’ risk assessments and are available for downloading from my Department’s website:
http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/Community/FireandEmergencyServices/. Additionally, risk assessments are developed, to ensure the safety of personnel, and to comply with a statutory responsibility under Section 19 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act, (1989) where significant changes are proposed in fire services’ operations. The Research Document Fire Services Task Analysis and Crewing Levels (28 March, 2013) provides guidance on how the main tasks that may need to be carried out for identified incident types can be carried out safely with normal crew levels.
