Council should intervene in Firefighters dispute say elected members

A number of Tipperary county council have called on Tipperary County Council to convene a special Council meeting to discuss the ongoing dispute with retained firefighters.

Councillors Seamus Morris, Michael Lowry, Shane Lee, Máirín McGrath, Ann Marie Ryan, Jim Ryan, Richie Molloy and Any Moroney sent a letter to the Council calling for a meeting to discuss urgent intervention in the ongoing dispute.

12 independent representatives on the local authority submitted a request to the local authority to convene the meeting to discuss what measures and contingencies are in place and what can be introduced to alleviate the situation and best support the local fire service.

They asked that a delegation of firefighters attend the meeting to give their perspective on matters and point out some of the problems they were facing.

Minister for Housing and Local Government, Darragh O’Brien, said on Tuesday that planned industrial action by retained firefighters this weekend will be “highly unsafe” for the communities they serve.

In a letter to Siptu divisional organiser Karan O’Loughlin, the Minister urged the union not to escalate industrial action. The 2,000-strong part-time service, which provides fire and first responder emergency services, has been engaged in industrial action for the past two months due to staffing numbers. 

Last weekend the industrial action led to a 50% reduction in fire cover across the country while retained firefighters refused to communicate with fire service management or regional communication centres unless it was for life saving information.

Ger Morris, a Sub-Officer at Nenagh Fire Station told Fran Curry's Tipp Today radio show last week that management do not understand the sacrifices made by firefighters to keep the service operational.

“Sometimes we should apologise to our families for what we put them through by being a retained firefighter. The missed birthdays, the missed Christmas dinner, the missed occasion that we can go somewhere – they’re in the service as much as we are but the management don’t just seem to get that because they were never in the service", he said.

“The management goes from Chief Fire Officers, Senior Assistant, Assistant Chief and Prevention – someone in their right mind years ago decided all engineers can run the fire service. We’re part of the local authority, we get our money from the local authority but the management run the service after that.”