Irelands Retained Fire Service

About two thirds of firefighters in Ireland are known as retained firefighters in that while they are trained firefighters they are not fulltime but paid a retaining fee and paid on a per call basis. Retained firefighters and stations are located primarily in the smaller towns and rural location where the number of calls, risk factors and cost dictate against a fulltime brigade.

Training

Firefighters would usually do a number of courses before going operational where they would then train on station during training nights along with experienced crew members. Each fire fighter undertakes a two-week recruitment course on basic fire fighting. This is followed by a two-week course on the use of the breathing apparatus, Training of the retained fire fighter is continuous, and is undertaken during regular drill nights at his/her local fire station and ongoing refresher training courses. Other courses would include road traffic collision extrication, pumps and chemical incident management as well as others dictated by the risks in their area e.g. water, chemical etc.

Shift

The shift system varies depending on which county the station is in and how many appliances / crews are attached to the station. A crew could work two weeks on call for 24 hours and then be a second response crew for another week. The retained system can be very difficult in that you need to be able to respond and in the station in a few minutes at all times during the 2 weeks or so and the likes of heading to a larger town shopping and bringing the family out can require a lot of arrangement.

Responding to a call.

Ireland (Éire) has 3 regional controls rooms which take calls for all the fire stations. The Eastern Regional Control Centre ERCC takes call for Dublin and 12 other counties.The exact process of calltaking is detailed on the Dublin Fire Brigade control room page but once a call is taken and the relevant appliance / station selected a retained firefighters pager will activate and a printout with the incident details is printed automatically in the station. Firefighters then have about 3/4 minutes to get to the station to go mobile to the fire. Like most countries they use their own transport to make their way to the station but do not have the use of blue lights or sirens so this can be difficult at times especially in the busier towns.

National Retained Firefighters Association

Retained Firefighters in Ireland beside belonging to a union are along represented and kept informed of developments pertaining to them through the NFRA. They have their own website located at www.nrfa.ie