Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 21 July 2020
331. Deputy John Brady asked the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government if his attention has been drawn to a report that was arried out by Wicklow County Council in 2014 on the provision of a full-time fire service for Bray and north County Wicklow; if the funding will be provided the for the establishment of a full-time fire service in north County Wicklow; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17302/20]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe 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, primarily through the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management (NDFEM) supports the fire authorities through setting general policy, providing a central training programme, issuing guidance on operational and other related matters and providing capital funding for equipment and priority infrastructural projects.
Fire services are provided in Ireland by local authorities in accordance with the provisions of the Fire Services Acts, 1981 and 2003. At the moment 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 218 fire stations nationwide.
A review of fire services in Ireland resulted in the publication of “Keeping Communities Safe - A Framework for Fire Safety in Ireland” (KCS) in 2013. This report was the outcome of a wide-ranging review of fire services in Ireland which was undertaken in 2011/2012, and was endorsed as national policy in early 2013. It is available on my Department's website at the following link:
https://www.housing.gov.ie/sites/default/files/migrated-files/en/Publications/Community/FireandEmergencyServices/FileDownLoad%2C32381%2Cen.pdf.
The KCS policy document set out the overall approach, the methods and the techniques to achieve the objective of keeping communities safe from fire. For the first time, it set out national norms, standards and targets against which local authorities can benchmark their fire services. It concluded that local authorities were best positioned to continue to provide fire services in Ireland.
Over the course of 2014/2015, an External Validation Group (EVG) commissioned by the Management Board of the NDFEM, visited every fire service in the country as part of a new external validation process arising from implementation of KCS. In April 2016, the Management Board published the first EVG Report titled “Local Delivery - National Consistency”.
In the case of Bray, Co. Wicklow, the report referred to by the Deputy was reviewed as part of the EVG process, and the findings of that process are available on my Department's website at the following link:
http://www.housing.gov.ie/local-government/fire-and-emergency-management/fire-services-ireland-local-delivery-national.
It concluded that based on the Area Categorisation for Bray a retained fire service was sufficient at that time. I understand that there has been no significant change in the intervening period.
