Cork City fire service is most expensive

The country’s most expensive fire service costs three times more to run per head of population than the cheapest, but it also gets to almost four times more fires within the critical 10- minute period than the cut- price comparison.

Cork City Council runs the dearest fire service, with costs running at €93.13 for every person in the service’s catchment area. That compares with just €28.25 per person to run the service provided by Kildare County Council.

However, Cork City’s service, which is full time, is at the scene of 89% of fires within ten minutes, compared to the part-time service in Kildare which can only get to 24% of fires within that time frame.

The figures are based on the 21,660 fires attended by the country’s brigades in 2014 and, although allowances have to be made for the makeup of the various brigades and the distances they have to cover, the statistics allow, for the first time, comparisons between investment in fire services and outcomes in terms of response times.

Cork City, which is the only authority in the country with a completely full-time service (Dublin is mostly full time but employs some retained firefighters), had the best performance overall, with just over 1% of fires taking more than 20 minutes to reach.

In Galway county, some 27% of fires were not reached for more than 20 minutes and just 44% were reached within 10 minutes.

The other counties with frequent low response times were Mayo where 25% of fires were not attended for more than 20 minutes; Wexford, 23%; Cork county, 22%, and Clare, 22%.

In all five of those counties, per capita spending on fire services was less than half the spend in Cork City. In Wexford, it was just €29, the second-lowest spend in the country — one third of what Cork City spends.

Fire brigades also responded to more than 9,000 non-fire incidents, mainly road accidents, and response times varied enormously here too.

Again Cork City had the best record, reaching 87% of incidents within ten minutes and taking longer than 20 minutes in just 1.5% of cases.

Wexford had the worst record overall, reaching just 16% of cases within ten minutes and taking longer than 20 minutes in 34% of cases.

The figures were compiled by the National Oversight and Audit Commission from local authority records and show that, countrywide, there has been very little change in response times in recent years.

On average in 2014, 45% of all fires were reached within ten minutes, compared with 44% in 2013, 45.5% in 2012, 46% in 2011, and 45% in 2010.

The number of fires not being reached for more than 20 minutes does appear to be falling, however.

Nationally the average was 12.5% in 2014 compared to 16% in 2010, 14% in 2011, and 13.5% in 2013.

Response times to road accidents and other incidents have varied a little, falling 2% since 2010 to a national average of 38.5% in 2014 for those attended within ten minutes. The proportion not attended for more than 20 minutes rose slightly, from 13.7% to 14.25%, over the same period.