Council makes €500,000 from fire brigade charges

DUBLIN City Council has made €500,000 in the last 13 months from its controversial decision to charge businesses for fire-brigade services.

The levies came into effect in January 2003 amid severe criticism from the business community in the capital.

Businesses are charged a €500 call-out charge for the first hour and €400 per fire tender for each additional hour. The bill can rise depending on the amount of water or foam used and if hazardous substances are involved.

The city council oversees the running of Dublin Fire Brigade, which serves both the city and county.

Assistant city manager Matt Twomey said bills totalling approximately €500,000 had been issued since the charges were introduced. Some €336,000 of this has been paid to date.

"The remainder is outstanding and we are pursuing that at the moment," he said.

The council has defended the charges, saying they are necessary to maintain an effective service. It will cost about €90 million to operate the fire-brigade service this year.

The council also believes businesses with adequate fire insurance should be able to recoup the costs of paying for call-outs. But business representative groups remain firmly opposed to the charges as do firefighters themselves.

"We are very much against them," said Tony McDonnell of SIPTU, the union which represents the vast majority of firefighters in Dublin and nationwide.

He said a 2001 review of the fire services, commissioned by then Environment Minister Noel Dempsey, had found against such charges.

The report also recommended the insurance industry pay a greater contribution to the cost of running the State's fire services.

"It envisaged that the local authorities should levy the insurance companies by a small percentage and cover the costs of the service that way," Mr McDonnell said.

"The beauty of such a system was that the companies would have been levied regardless of whether they called the fire department or not, so, therefore, they never felt inclined not to ring the fire service if something happened."

He said that, as things stood, some businesses could become reluctant to call the fire brigade. "Take a big complex in the city; let's suppose they have six or seven false alarms a year. Heretofore, we would respond to that, and there would have been no problem," he said. "Now.... management may say: 'You check it out first. Don't call the brigade until you've checked. The last time it was only a false alarm and it cost us money'.

"In our game, time is of the essence. We would rather respond to a small room on fire that we could control as opposed to a corridor with several rooms on fire where it's a small inferno at that stage."

The Dublin Chamber of Commerce said the charges were a form of double taxation.

"The most inventive thing that you see from local authorities these days in Dublin is their ability to squeeze money out of business," said spokesman Declan Martin.

"The crazy thing about all of this is that it is, effectively, a double taxation, because business already pays its contribution through the commercial rates system."