Concerns raised over no back-up for emergency radio network

Roscommon County Council is spending about €300,000 per annum on a fire services emergency radio communications network, which has no back-up system, the December meeting of Roscommon County Council was told.

The Roscommon network is linked to a central national mobilising and communication system, which was criticised by Independent councillor Micheál Frain, a former station officer at Ballaghaderreen Fire Station.

At the December meeting of Roscommon County Council, Cllr Frain pointed out that during Storm Éowyn, the communication system relied on third party sites without any back up power supply, resulting in the failure of this critical infrastructure.

Raising the issue through a notice of motion, the Ballaghaderreen councillor asked Roscommon County Council, as the fire authority, to write a “strongly worded letter” to the Minister for Housing and Local Government and the National Directorate of Fire and Emergency Management.

He asked that the correspondence enquire as to what measures had been taken to ensure that the national mobilising and communication system would have its own independent power supply to deliver fire services emergency communications (Tetra ) in the event of further storms.

“It hardly seems credible that a national agency charged with the responsibility of delivering fire emergency communications via the Tetra system are reliant on third party owned sites, with no back up power supply.

“Why is there no back-up supply to maintain the services during mains power outages and failures? At every major event, the National Directorate of Fire and Emergency Management are on the media telling us to charge our batteries and get our generators ready and yet the same body didn’t have the back-up system to operate the Tetra emergency system during Storm Éowyn. And unfortunately, they weren’t there for Storm Amy either.

“We are paying up on €300,000 per annum to run the system and it’s hard to believe there is no back-up available when it goes down. We were in the same position last January.

“All of the fire services and everyone stood up to the plate last January during the storm and really did a great job.But unfortunately again, one of the agencies of the State which has a responsibility for this let us down again,” he said.

Cllr Frain paid tribute to management and firefighters throughout the county for the work that was carried out during the storms.

“But unfortunately when the powers that be are supposed to be managing this haven’t delivered, it has to be called out,” he said.

Pointing out that he was one of the council CEOs on the Board of the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management, Shane Tiernan said the issues raised by Cllr Frain were discussed at their last meeting. He said there was a significant presentation made at that meeting about the resilience of the Tetra network and what needed to be done going forward.

“I suppose one of the points Tetra was trying to make was that the network and towers were resilient, it was the power that wasn’t. And the power needed was so prolonged that the battery back ups went flat and they couldn’t recharge because the power wasn’t restored. They argue that 91% of nationwide mobile vehicle coverage was maintained throughout the storm. I might disagree with that, you might disagree with that but that is what was presented,” he said.

Mr Tiernan said that he sought the same answers as Cllr Frain was seeking in terms of what could be put in place for future storm events, particularly with the issue of power resilience.

He said the ESB needed to get on board, the issue of generators had to be looked along with back-up battery packs at towers around the country.