Emergency services ill-equipped to deal with nuclear disaster

Irish fire and disaster emergency services would not be equipped to cope with the fallout of a major nuclear accident, the chair of the National Firefighters' Committee, Brian Murray, has warned.

Mr Murray said there had never been an emergency exercise in Dublin by the fire service to assess how it would cope in a major emergency. He said the response of each of the 37 fire brigades around the State to a major emergency was dependent on the preparedness of their local authority. While each local authority was required to have an emergency plan, there was no auditing of these plans by central Government, he said.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme yesterday, after RTÉ's screening on Sunday night of a drama-documentary on Sellafield, Fallout, he called for a risk assessment to be carried out in each of the major urban areas, for adequate resources for such equipment as biological detectors and for emergency exercises to be carried out. The fire services were hugely under-resourced, he added.

Meanwhile, the Green Party has called on the Minister for the Environment Dick Roche to circulate a copy of the Government's National Emergency Plan for Nuclear Accidents to all households. Its environment spokesman, Ciarán Cuffe, said he had no confidence in the Government's ability to protect Irish citizens in the event of a nuclear accident at Sellafield.

"It is revealing that the Government's information number 1890 443322 was either engaged or playing a recorded announcement after the Fallout programme was screened. No doubt it would be the same if there had been an actual accident at the troubled Sellafield plant."