Shortage of firefighters and lack of training an ongoing safety threat, conference told

Ongoing problems with recruitment and retention in the country’s firefighting services combined with a lack of specialised training in key areas is “a disaster waiting to happen”, the Siptu conference in Galway heard on Wednesday morning.

Cathal Murray, a full-time firefighter and union representative based in Cork said staffing levels for the service in Cork had not been increased since 1970 despite substantial increases in the city’s population and the area over which it is spread.

High profile incidents in Creeslough, Wexford and Midleton had highlighted a lack of resources and shortages of staff that urgently need to be addressed, he said.

When the alarm was raise in Wexford, he said, with regard to a fire at the town’s general hospital, he said, there was almost no staff left to respond to it because of a road traffic incident outside the town.

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“The initial response was two firefighters, a station officer and a firefighter, and they had to get porters and members of the public to help roll out their hoses.

“In Donegal, because there are no trained urban search and rescue firefighters in the Republic of Ireland they had to get in qualified urban search and rescue firefighters from Belfast. It’s an area where they have trained people or looked to set up a unit, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

In Midleton, I witnessed farmer being asked to bring their tractors into the town to carry people out in the buckets of their tractors because there wasn’t the equipment or boats available to the firefighters. Later the full-time firefighters from Cork were brought with the proper equipment and safety gear but there was a picture from before that of a (retained/part-time) firefighter without a rope on him floating down the street. How somebody wasn’t killed I really don’t know.

Far more routinely, Mr Murray said, emergency vehicles are deemed unavailable due to staff shortages. “The number of appliances off the run in Diblin on Monday was five and that’s at a time when people are not taking annual leave.”

He said the shortages were a danger to both the public and to firefighters themselves while fire were also causing more damage to property due to delays in units of the fire brigade arriving to tackle them.

Siptu organiser for the area, Con Casey, said the scale of the problem was “phenomenal”.

“They need to up recruitment to compensate because of the number of people retiring at present. They are operating at around the bare minimum,” he said.

Tom Kitrick, meanwhile, a retained firefighter based in Westport told the conference “we were looking down the barrel of the collapse of the service”, when members took industrial action earlier this year.

A motion calling for increased recruitment and improve retention was overwhelmingly backed by delegates.

Responding to the comments, Dublin Fire Brigade said it is in the middle of an intensive recruitment campaign at present and has “100 personnel in various stages of training in both operational and control, room at present.” It said it does not have an issue with recruitment or retention but appliances are “on occasion” off the road.

The Department of Local Government said it could not comment on operational matter but that progress on addressing the concerns of Retained Firefighters had been made. “Minister O’Brien has always acknowledged the challenges associated with both the recruitment and retention of retained fire personnel and has consistently worked towards a better approach and will continue to do so,” it said.

Cork Fire Brigade was also approached for comment.