Firefighters striking over pay and conditions

They are part-time firefighters who are paid an annual retainer to be available for callouts. Maybe inform yourself about the facts.

Just don't complain when there's no firefighters to put the blaze in your house out 👍

Yes you are missing the important facts of the story.

You have it all wrong.

It doesn't matter what their motive is in signing up. Like every worker they should get decent pay and conditions.

The word volunteer is a get out of jail card for the government not to provide proper services to run and support the population of the country. If is wasn't for volunteers and good will, the country would be in a sorry state. It helps the governments cause to paint the retained fire service as volunteers.

The fact is they're not volunteers at all, it is a full time job that only pays part time wages. There are plenty of restrictions to both your work and personal life. You must live and work in close proximity to the fire station, you must be at the station within a short period of time if the pager goes off, you must attend a certain high precentage of calls outs. You have to deal with hugely traumatic experiences, seeing death and destruction in the course of your work.

To call them volunteers is an insult to everything they do. They should get paid a fair price and if its one of the reasons they can't attract new recruits, then they need to be paid more.

What kind of job allows you to run off at a moment's notice?

Unless you're self employed or have a very understanding local employer who is happy for you to drop everything and run I dont see this part time career as an option for very many people.

Good for them.

You are on the right track now.

If you read up a bit more about this matter you will find it's a bit more complicated than you think.

This is an essential service that any of us may need to call on.

You're right, it's not. Which is why having acceptable working conditions is important. It's a vital service that doesn't have an unlimited pool of potential applicants, because not only is the ability to meet the time commitment difficult, but it's very dangerous, physical and can involve anti-social hours.

I know two former retained firefighters. One also worked as a bouncer, the other for a governmental organisation that provided employment support that was itself a part-time position. You don't have to be available 24/7/365 at the drop of a hat. You're rostered in for a call-out schedule, so you can plan the rest of your life around that. You have to be available for a certain level of on-call cover, with a commitment to attend the station within a given number of minutes when paged, and to attend regular training.

Retained firefighters are not unique to Ireland - they're common throughout the world. It's usually only cities that would have full-time firefighters: in Dublin, 12 fire stations are staffed by full-time fire fighters, while 2 are retained. Cork City has 2 full-time and one retained station.

Any job should allow you to do it, same as Coast Gaurd or Search and Rescue etc. You'd want to have a right **** of an employer for them not to see the benefits. it's not like the have to pay you for the hours you go.

I asked my employer about it (car dealer) and they were super supportive and wanted to put it on social media that they support employees who volunteer in such a manner and all.

The volunteer fire stations in the local are have signs out the front listing all the employers that support thier staff to respond.

It causes major disruption for employers. The upside of positive publicity will soon be forgotten if customer service suffers because staff are running off to callouts.

The indirect and societal benefits of having a fire service is not going to be a consideration for a private business. Let someone else pay for the service while you use it if necessary, that's the way of the world.

If you were a shareholder in a business, would you be happy to see your investment suffer because that business was allowing its staff to become retained firefighters while its "right cnut" competitors were not?

Lads, the OP is clearly acting the boll1x. There's no way they could be that thick or uninformed and yet start a thread on the matter.

One of my closest friends is a retained firefighter. It's a shyte job, with shyte conditions and shyte pay. We were at breakfast about 2 weeks ago and he was still pretty upset about a dead baby situation he attended a week earlier. I certainly couldn't cope with the things he has seen and attended to. He has certainly saved many lives. It's a horrible but necessary job.

He's tied to where he can live and work. Firefighters can't live or work more than 5 mins from the local station. That also limits the type of job he can do as many employers can't have an employee down tools and run off when the beeper goes off. Nor are they sure that the employee will turn up for work as they may be out all night at a call. He can't sit and have a beer in the evening either as he could be called upon at any time. I don't think people realise the sacrifice people have to make when they are retained fire fighters.

They shouldn't be on call 24/7 but getting rostered days off is difficult as there are chronic staff shortages. Even getting annual leave when they want it is difficult due to staffing. There's a reason they can't get new recruits. Because it's a shyte job. Look how mental people went about the 5km limit we had when there was a COVID lockdown. That's it nearly all year, every year for the retained firefighters. In the last round of recruitment in my town, only 3 people made the cut but none of them took up the role as they either lived too far away or their employer wasn't in a position to release them.

I'm not too sure if this element has been fixed but they used to pay a pension levy but don't get paid a pension.

The rates of pay are ok if you are out on calls all the time. But the fact is that they are only called out when needed and some weeks they mightn't receive a call so they only get their retainer and training fee for those weeks. Roughly €9k to €12k for being on call 24/7 and roughly another €3k for training with the clause that you must be living and working (or not working) within 5 mins of the station (usually 2 miles). And it's not only the firefighter who suffers, it's their family too. Daddy can't bring Jr to his match in the next town over because he's on call. My mate has missed weddings, first communions etc. When you get the call, you just gotta go.

Unfortunately the only solution is to get more firefighters. And that's not easy. It won't happen as things stand, changes need to be made.

The Government need to make it worthwhile for people to take up the role so I think that would mean making the retained firefighters full-time (or at least allow people that option) County Council employees who have handy jobs in their town and pay them appropriately for a full-time role. Only with more firefighters in place can proper rosters with adequate time off be put in place. Nobody should be on call 24/7/365 and it's nearly at that stage now.

Are you for real you have to come from a station that's doing over 500 calls a year to reach anywhere near 50k.

Those sort of people it does suit alright I'd reckon. But are they getting thin on the ground these days, particularly in more rural towns?

So you've basically admitted now you didn't have any facts correct talking about volunteers.

That’s it exactly.

I fail to believe that there’s anyone in Ireland with IQ levels low enough to have the opinion of the OP or to agree with that opinion. It has to be a piss-take.

If it suits a person then it is a great extra job to have but the restrictions it places on people seem to be very limiting in this day and age. They will need to do somethign if they cant fill the numbers - perhaps increase the retainer and reduce the call out fee. Plenty of stories of 3 or 4 fire crews arriving at houses to help someone who is locked out or to look at a small fire that is no danger. That said they need to be there when really needed so it has to be worth while.

they are not volunteers, a volunteer doesn't get paid.

One of the big problems is that people are actually taking your advice, there are not enough people liking it, so not enough are doing it. As a result, of low staff levels, firefighters are forced to be "on call" for longer hours, which is one of the reasons they are striking.

My brother is in law is a firefighter, he is paid a retainer every 3 months, and gets a fee per call out. The days he is not on call, he can gets social welfare.

Its not really an attractive career option for most people, no bank would consider you for a mortgage unless there was another person on the application.

Im kind of with the OP on this one. I mean if you dont like the pay and conditions then just get another job better suited to your expectations.