Fire Service
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-14
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Paula Butterly (FG), Louth

I thank the Minister of State for his answer, but it does not go to the heart of the issue, which is that these retained firefighters have to retire at 62. I am going to repeat much of what I said in my four minutes. These people have bills to pay and families to support. They are fighting fit and able to work. They want to work, and there is dignity in the fact that they want to work. They want to be of service to their communities, so the very fact that we have over 300 retained firefighters who are going to have to retire within the next year, a large portion of whom are in my constituency of County Louth, and are saying that they do not want to do so means that we cannot just shut the door and say that we reviewed this matter two years ago and, therefore, we are going to stop there and wait another few years. These are people's lives. This is people's work. This is their dignity. The gap is four years. Four years of having to rely on social welfare is not enough. It is not the right answer to give to people who go out there day in and day out to fight on our behalf.
When there is a flood, who do we call? When there is a fire, who do we call? This is not "Ghostbusters". These are valuable members of our community. We cannot just sit back and say "No" to somebody because of their age. I could go further and say that we could consider this to be age discrimination. Why is it 62? If you are medically fit and want to work, we should not be putting those barriers up. Think of the loss of knowledge and experience. We are constantly trying to employ and attract new talent into the fire services. If we continue to have this gap of knowledge and experience, who is going to pass that down to the new recruits? Who is going to be there?
I thank the Minister of State for his answer, but it is just not good enough.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:56+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-14