Cork’s fire services set the pace for response times across the country

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

County Cork had the fastest responding retained fire service in the country last year in the event of non-fire emergencies, getting to the scene in an impressive three minutes and 31 seconds on average, twice as fast as the slowest service and beating the national median time by almost two and a half minutes.

When it comes to a fire emergency, county Cork’s fire service mobilises on average in four minutes and 34 seconds, considerably quicker than the national median time for retained fire services of five minutes and 47 seconds.

Cork city’s fire-fighters are no slouches either, achieving the highest percentage of fire incidents where the first fire tender reached the scene in less than ten minutes (85pc), an improvement on the already high 83pc achieved in 2023.

Cork city also continued to have the lowest percentage where first fire tender attendance at a fire incident took longer than 20 minutes (0.88pc). For all other emergency incidents, Cork city at 1.86pc recorded the lowest percentage where first attendance took longer than 20 minutes.

The figures are contained in a report by the National Oversight and Audit Commission (NOAC), which examined the performance of the country’s 31 local authorities across a range of areas in 2024.

A retained fire service relies on part-time firefighters who are on-call from their regular jobs or homes to respond to emergencies. They make up the majority of fire service personnel in Ireland.

Five local authorities - Dublin City, Galway County, Limerick City and County, Louth, and Waterford City and County operate both full-time and retained fire services while Cork City operates a full-time fire service only. The remaining 21 local authorities operate retained fire services.

The NOAC report found that in fire-related emergencies in 2024, Louth had the quickest response time for full-time services of one minute and nine seconds and also the quickest response time for retained fire services at four minutes and 14 seconds.

Cork County Council is currently recruiting firefighters for its stations in Kanturk and Millstreet. The on-call role carries a top salary of almost €20,000, as well as hourly pay to attend incidents. Successful candidates can continue in their day job but have to be able to reach their station within five minutes.