This article is from page 2 of the 2005-09-06 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
FIRE BRIGADE personnel in Ennis have refused to operate a new €600,000 piece of essential fire-fighting vehicle, in an ongoing row with Clare County Council over its con- tinued refusal to pay bench-marking entitle- ments.
Fire-fighters at the county’s busiest sta- tion have refused to participate in a training course, which they are required to attend be- fore they can operate the new vehicle.
As aresult, the new Bronto Hydraulic Plat- form sits idle in a shed at the council’s ma- chinery yard at the rear of Ennis fire station, and is likely to do so for a while.
It has also emerged that Ennis Fire Serv- ice’s existing hydraulic platform is not capa- ble of extending to the top floors or roofs of some of the town’s tallest buildings. The new custom-built HP or cherry picker, which ar- rived in Ennis last week, has more than twice the reach of the existing appliance and for the first time will enable Ennis Fire Brigade reach the uppermost levels of several build- ings on the Mill Road in particular.
“As it stands, if there was a major blaze in one of those apartment buildings, we would have no way of evacuating people from the top floor, unless they could get down a level or two first. If anyone was trapped on the top floor, we would have a serious problem get- ting to them,’ according to fire-fighters.
“We will not set foot inside the new appli- ance until we have received our benchmark- ing. Every other employee in the Town Coun- cil and County Council has received theirs, so why should we be any different.
“We are the only station in the county with an agreement with management and they still won’t pay up. We are the only fire service in the country, which has not yet received bench marking payments, every other county has,” said one frustrated fire-fighter.
A council spokesperson said that the concil had “not been formally notified of fire-fight- ers refusal to operate any equipment .. . Fur- thermore, all employees are required under successive national agreements, to comply with modernisation and technology and we anticipate their full cooperation in this mat-
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ter’.