Cork City Councillors secure special meeting to force action on closure of Ballincollig Fire Station
A special meeting will take place later today in City Hall chambers.
A Cork City Councillor has called for a special sitting of the Council this evening to find a way through the closure of Ballincollig Fire Station impasse.
Cllr Lorna Bogue (An Rabharta Glas—Green Left) has secured this evening’s meeting to address the council’s emergency services policy with a particular reference to Ballincollig Fire Station by submitting a demand for the meeting mandated by the Local Government Act.
Earlier this month, Cllr Bogue made a submission to Cork City Council under section 140 of the Local Government Act. The resolution in that submission, signed by all four Sinn Féin councillors, as well as councillors Ted Tynan and Brian McCarthy, and Cllr Bogue, stated that "Cork City Council resolves to re-open the Ballincollig fire station immediately with a full-time fire service while maintaining current staffing levels elsewhere.
Section 140 submissions need a minimum of three signatories, and once received, local authorities have a limited time frame to act on them.
In a statement to the media, Cllr Bogue said, 'It should not be the case that councillors have to compel senior officials in their local authority to fulfill their responsibilities, but in this case, the council executive is acting in contradiction to democratically decided motions of the council and has not provided requested information on fire service provision to justify their actions.'
With the extension of the city boundaries in 2019, Ballincollig fell under the stewardship of the City Council. Cllr Bogue said that any associated costs with maintaining a full-time firefighting crew for Ballincollig should have been secured from the central government.
Cllr Bogue said the closure of Ballincollig Fire Station amounts to “austerity by stealth and an attack on essential public services”.
The station house, located on Leo Murphy Link Road, has been closed since 2021. Cork City Council has an ongoing recruiting campaign to hire retained (part-time) firefighters for Ballincollig.
Union members of Cork City firefighters have also been campaigning for the fire station to be re-opened and earlier this year staged industrial action.
Speaking to Tripe + Drisheen, firefighter Billy Crowley, a shop steward with Siptu, said that tonight’s City Council meeting is “essentially democracy in action.”
Mr Crowley said that firefighters, the public, and local politicians have all been telling the council the same thing - that the station in Ballincollig needs to re-open.
Earlier this year, Mr Crowley told T+D that the fire service is stretched “too thinly,” and that the City Council’s efforts to recruit 'retained' firefighters and increase staffing are “proving impossible.”
“You can only stretch something so far before it breaks,” he said.
Currently, the fire station in Ballincollig has no facilities for living quarters for staff to stay overnight. The Irish Examiner reported that according to City Hall, the cost of staffing Ballincollig with a full-time crew of City-based firefighters and modifying the firehouse would amount to around €4m.
Separately, negotiations between Cork City firefighters union members and Cork City Council will resume at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) on Wednesday in Cork.
Mr Crowley said he hopes an end is in sight to the dispute.
This evening’s meeting will be livestreamed on www.corkcity.ie/tv and on the City Council’s YouTube page from 5:30pm.
