Firefighting tragedy - An accident waiting to happen

The tragic deaths of firemen Brian Murray and Mark O’Shaughnessy in Bray this week have highlighted the disgraceful lack of resources and political will to deal with firefighting problems.

People are more likely to die from fire in Ireland than in 19 of 20 developed countries surveyed.

Yet the Government refuses to set up a national agency to tackle the problem, with the result that our fire services are fragmented, outdated, under-resourced, and based on systems that were designed to cope with risks that existed in the 1940s.