Retained firefighters threaten to escalate action over station closures

An official Siptu picket at the Cork City Fire Brigade Station last month. The union said the retained firefighters are striking to ensure that the Government's report on the future of the service will be implemented to resolve the "recruitment and retention crisis that threatens to collapse this essential and life-saving community resource". Picture: Larry Cummins

Approximately 2,000 Siptu members who work as retained firefighters may escalate current industrial action the closure of 50% of fire stations in every county. 

The trade union said the retained firefighters are striking to ensure that the Government's report on the future of the service will be implemented to resolve the "recruitment and retention crisis that threatens to collapse this essential and life-saving community resource".

The action came into effect after midnight on Tuesday morning and is scheduled to last one week.

Retained firefighters are not full-time employees and are instead paid a retainer to be on call for fire stations. The system is designed to provide 24/7 cover, with retained firefighters also receiving a per-callout fee.

While the retained firefighters are still responding to emergency call-outs as normal, they will be refusing to engage with scheduled training and courses, paperwork, and standard firefighting communications technology for the incident command system. They will be communicating by phone rather than the radio equipment in the fire stations and fire appliances.

Without an urgent response they say they will escalate the action into the closure of roughly 50% of fire stations in every county.

Siptu representative Tom Ketterick, a retained firefighter with the Mayo Fire Service, said: "We have huge problems retaining and recruiting staff and this is mainly due to the 24-hour, seven-days-a-week nature of the on-call service it is."

He said members have to carry an alerter and get "no time off from that". "There's a lack of fixed pay. We get a small retainer to be on call and then we depend on the calls to make up our wages, and if you go to a bank or anyone with this for a loan, they only took at the fixed part of the income which is a very minute part.

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"And, depending on your county council, you'll be asked to live and work and remain 2.4 or 2.5 kilometres from the station at all times, with no break from that."

Mr Ketterick called on the Local Government Management Agency to "pony up" and implement the 13 recommendations of a Department of Local Government review into the sustainability of the service. He said 60% of people in the retained fire service have indicated that they want to leave the service under current conditions.

"We don't plan to return to negotiations without a proposal on the table to fix it." He said the proposed escalation from June 13 would be an approximation of that scenario, with around half of fire stations not operating.

"If the fire service collapses with 60% leaving, what we're moving on to next week will be roughly what it looks like. There will be some stations that are so undercrewed that they have to close, that they can't respond."