Firefighters striking over pay and conditions

Sorry but you're way off beam on this one. Have you heard any of these men interviewed? If your gaff goes on fire and you phone 999 or 112, you presumably would like to think that the fire engine would be on it's way to you within minutes rather than hours??? That means in practice that these retained firefighters have to be on standby in close proximity to their stations pretty much 24/7. That's hugely limiting.

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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.

Darwin would indicate there is a way

It being a shyte job is a matter of opinion and depends on a person's circumstances. It's impossible for many people to consider the job due to the distance requirement and even if they meet that requirement, many/most private sector employers won't tolerate staff going to callouts. On the other hand, if someone works for their local council, has a "local" mindset and rarely strays from their own area, it's not very limiting.

As for attending communions etc., plenty of people are single, divorced, have grown up children etc. I've known lots of retained firefighters, they all loved it, got a buzz from callouts and didn't know what to do with themselves when they were forced to retire in their fifties. It gave them a lot of kudos in the community and other benefits included having the craic with their comrades after calls. They much preferred do something useful such as attending a serious fire or road collision than having the "freedom" to do some bullsh*t like attend a wedding.

The unions will try to have people believe that firefighters are suffering terribly and will use the sort of emotional statements (what if your house was on fire) as seen in this thread to their advantage. In other news, all farmers are poor and all nurses are angels.

Look like it's going to week 3, government just won the 2 votes on motion & amendment

Jaysus quit while your behind.

Vital service and a very dangerous and tough job mentally, usually first on the scene and no doubt all of them have seen horrific things.

despicable that it isn’t a full time , paid job with all the benefits attached.

Ask yourself, would you sign up for it?

I wouldn't - far too restrictive in terms of being on call and available.

Fire service respond when requested they do not respond when they want.

A tough job, god bless them, respect and pay them, our useless government could take a pay cut to make up the money

Do you know any retained firefighters now? I mean active ones, not retired ones? Because, in rural Ireland anyway, there's a recruitment crisis and people like my mate who is a retained firefigher for the last 20 years is on call way more nowadays than he was when he started 20 years ago because there aren't enough staff to provide adequate cover.

I'd also call you out on saying that they'd rather attend a road collision than go to a wedding or other social event. Not very realistic to think that someone would rather be pushing someone's guts back into their stomach cavity while trying to save a life on a wet windy Winter's night or attending to an incident where a baby dies or a teen hangs themselves rather than be supping a few pints and having the craic at a wedding.

The number of retained firefighters needed in my town is 18. That's what the Council agrees there needs to be to have an adequate service. There are 11 of them in the service at the moment. So, 7 short. And they can't get suitable people to apply for those positions. That's a serious recruitment crisis and not just the unions talking shyte.

3 or 4 crews arriving at houses doesn't happen where there are retained firefighters because usually there is only one crew in that area. Maybe they have two appliances, but they don't know exactly what they are dealing with until they get to the scene. Fire crews don't know if it's a small fire that's no danger until they arrive. They get the call, they rush to the scene because seconds count.

This is what you don't understand. All retained firefighters have been through a lot. If you attend road crashes, at some stage you are going to have people with their guts hanging out, their eyes hanging out etc. I'm not saying it for the craic or to get sympathy. It's something that they regularly have to deal with. Car crashes can be horrific. Just look at the M50 crash a few years ago where the woman lost her head in the crash.

I wouldn't consider myself an expert but I do have some knowledge because one of my best mates has been a retained firefighter in my town for the past 20+ years. He's considered quitting a couple of times, he's had tough times for sure but he has a wife and kids and a mortgage so he needs the money. But, as he says himself, it's getting tougher and getting near breaking point. It's not totally about the money for him though, he does actually like doing good (and even yourself will have to admit they are doing good) but the shine is being taken off the job due to the staffing crisis.

I don't know how much time 'off call' retained firefighters are supposed to have but when you have a crew of 11 when you should have 18, then you are going to get less time off because a certain number of firefighters are needed to respond to a call. Too few firefighters and they can't respond properly to whatever they are facing. The public suffer and the firefighters could be putting themselves in an unacceptable level of danger. Regarding the legality of it, I don't know. I do know it's not extended on a whim. It's extended because they don't have any other cover due to very few suitable people wanting the job. Because the terms and conditions (in real terms) have deteriorated over the years.

There's no easy fix. There are currently 2000 retained fire fighters. That's not enough. They need more. Even if the Council's gave them full-time jobs at €50k each, then that would cost well over €100m. But something has to be done to keep the staff that they have and to attract new people to the profession.

Fair play to you.

Forward that to every politician in the country.

Actually I didn't hugely rewrite it. Just tweaked bits here and there over the day. Definately not an enforced "toning down" or done under duress or influence from anyone else. I've been out of that service area for the past 5 years, so I have no real skin in the game any more (except maybe a few persisting gripes and chips on my shoulder, no more than yourself!!!)

I was wondering what was your own motivation or justification behind such a raw and bitter frontal assault on a generally well respected vital service? Your reply seems to offer some hints. Were you or someone belonging to you by any chance rejected by the retained fire service in preference to an "insider" or a "relative". Have you or someone connected to you been a victim of local authority "neptostic" recruitment practice. I actually appreciate and feel your pain if this is so. I've been subject to the same myself and the LA's of Ireland are rotten to the core with preferential recruitment of mates and family members and people underqualified or not qualified for jobs, being recruited on who they know, or jobs being specifically created for certain individuals. It's a scandal that bears being exposed and thrown right open to public scrutiny but I imagine the wagons would be very quickly circled and the ranks closed if any investigation were to go poking around in the sordid mess.

I won't deny that much of the retained fire service ranks have traditionally been a family affair down the years (as are many fire services world wide, quite understandibly. It's partly a cultural thing!). I know of whole dynasties of family, brothers and fathers and sons serving together or succeeding each other in the services. I also know of plenty of people who have been rejected or shafted by retained fire services in favour of "insiders", often much less well qualified or suited to the nature of the work. There's no denying that happens. And I know of at least one individual that managed to draw three separate wages from the local authority, as a retained firefighter, a regular council employee and a councillor (He's a nice fella btw, now retired from FS). I also admit there is an element of Gung-ho-ism prevelant amongst many fire service personnel (no more than in other emergency service) which attracts some to it for the action, the glory, the public appreciation/admiration, the adrenelin and perhaps even some of the gore (and the opportunity to exchange "war stories"!) and many of them would contine to do so regardless of the financial viability of same (I did it in mountain rescue myself for years, on a wholly voluntary basis at considerable personal financial cost!)

I also accept that the many of the retained fire fighters and their unions are not entirely without fault on all this either, with their resistance to change, manipulation of times, griping over the nature and justification of call outs, adherence to static PDA's and jealously guarding their own individual territories. I even know of some fire fighters that have allegedly resorted to starting gorse fires themselves to up their call out rates. But the bottom line is that the retained fire service has been grossly underfunded in Ireland for years and management in many LA's have attempted to run it on a shoestring and cut costs to the bone wherever they could, to gain plaudits from CE's and central government. So this crises has been coming down the tracks for years and is finally coming home to roost. To resolve it will undeniably require compromise and changes and considerable input from both sides, but both sides need to be prepared to listen and take on board the solutions.

Finally, re you query on the less than €1 p/h claim, If I offered you the calculations you would undoubtedly dispute it anyway, but it's based on an average annual retainer of €9k, a drill rate of €22.05 p/h, a first hour daytime call out rate €44.10 and an out of hours bonus allowence of double time. If you apply that to a rural station with minimal call outs (lets say 15-20 minor call outs per annum, with few lasting over an hour or two) but with a below full strength crew whereby all members are effectively on call 24/365 (Even though you would argue that point saying they are not actually working all those hours, but for the sake of argument lets reduce it to on call for 48 weeks of the year) then the actual hourly rate is well below the average industrial wage, close to or possibly below €1 p/h and definitely not sufficient for a person to exist on without either another (very accomodating or self employed) job or supplementary welfare.

There is a simple economic and emotive reality about the existence of the emergency service. They can be regarded as an expensive luxury or insurance policy that we hope that we never have to avail of, but unfortunately some people have to, and are very thankful that they exist when they need them. Are we prepared to pay for that expensive luxury that we might (hopefully) never use? (In fact some will end up paying more such is the farcical price structure and call out charging policy differences between individual LA's). Despite its flaws, I am prepared to pay, you're obviously not!