‘Act now or more firefighters will die’

“I WILL never have the words to explain to you how it feels to have the person you build your life around taken from you so needlessly.”

These were the words with which Hazel O’Brien, girlfriend of 25-year-old Mark O’Shaughnessy, one of the two firefighters killed battling a blaze in Bray in September, addressed the meeting of Wicklow County Council yesterday.

Ms O’Brien opened her speech to the council by asking: “Are people willing to risk human life in order to save money?” She said the people of north Wicklow were losing faith in the emergency service and that the local authority now had to “do something”.