Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 1 April 2021
161. Deputy Marc Ó Cathasaigh asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the number of times calls were placed to the fire service in cases in which the closest retained fire service was unavailable to attend due to unavailability of personnel in which alternative tenders had to attend instead by county over the past five years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18063/21]
View answer162. Deputy Marc Ó Cathasaigh asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the number of fire service callouts that have been responded to by the retained fire service nationwide by county; the number that have been responded to by the permanent fire service by county; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18064/21]
View answer163. Deputy Marc Ó Cathasaigh asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the number of retained firefighters in the fire service; the number of permanent firefighters in the service; the age breakdown of both groups; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18065/21]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 161 to 163, inclusive, together.
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 Services Acts 1981 and 2003. My Department supports fire authorities through setting general policy, providing the legislative framework, running a central training programme and issuing guidance on operational and other related matters and providing capital funding for priority infrastructural projects. Fire services issues are managed in my Department by the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management (NDFEM).
Fire services are provided in Ireland by local authorities in accordance with the provisions of the Fire Services Acts, 1981 and 2003. Under this legislation, there are 31 fire authorities which provide fire prevention and fire protection services for communities through 27 service delivery structures. Local authority fire services are delivered by approximately 3,300 local authority staff engaged at 217 fire stations nationwide, with 16 of these stations being staffed by full-time firefighters, a further 4 are mixed full-time and retained, and 197 are staff by retained firefighters.
My Department collects statistics from local authorities, on an annual basis, regarding fire service attendance at incidents and the types of incident involved. Fire statistics for the past five years are available at the link below:
https://www.gov.ie/en/collection/f01ff-fire-statistics/
The information requested by the Deputy in regard to mobilisation of fire service responses is not available in my Department. However, it should be noted that the arrangements for mobilising a response to a 999/112 call from the public for fire service assistance are handled at three Regional Communications Centres, where call-takers establish the location and nature of the emergency and then mobilise the nearest available fire brigade resource (or resources) to the scene. Individual fire stations (or an appliance in the station in the case of multi-appliance stations) may not be available to respond (they may already be attending another call) or may be 'off the run' at different times for a number of reasons, including the non-availability of personnel. Where a crew are already dealing with an incident or are unavailable for any reason, the next resources on the pre-determined attendance list for that kind of emergency are mobilised by the Regional Communications Centre. I am aware that a small number of situations occurred over the last twelve months where crews were not available due to covid cases or close contacts with covid cases. However, an appropriate fire service response was made to all calls for assistance from the public.
While my Department does not routinely collect the data in the format requested by the Deputy, a breakdown of the number of firefighters in each fire service as of March 2021, based on data supplied by local authorities, is set out in the table below.
|
Fire service |
Total no. of operational staff in stations |
|
Carlow |
45 |
|
Cavan |
93 |
|
Clare |
76 |
|
Cork City |
152 |
|
Cork County |
204 |
|
Donegal |
154 |
|
Dublin |
963 |
|
Galway |
138 |
|
Kerry |
104 |
|
Kildare |
63 |
|
Kilkenny |
67 |
|
Laois |
73 |
|
Leitrim |
43 |
|
Limerick |
140 |
|
Longford |
45 |
|
Louth |
100 |
|
Mayo |
119 |
|
Meath |
72 |
|
Monaghan |
51 |
|
Offaly |
51 |
|
Roscommon |
45 |
|
Sligo |
47 |
|
Tipperary |
127 |
|
Waterford |
124 |
|
Westmeath |
46 |
|
Wexford |
64 |
|
Wicklow |
95 |
|
Total |
3301 |
