Brian Stanley on civil defence funding, volunteers and frontline gaps

Okay, thanks Cahiro, and just welcome to the witnesses, and thanks for coming in. I want to concentrate a bit on civil defence, just to acknowledge that the upgrade of the equipment, I can see in County Leash, I mean, it's gone from a very, very poor situation to a very, very good situation. I don't know if you've seen the new accommodation, Ms. Carty, and you can see, you know, and just acknowledge the work of the County Council in helping to get that in place, and the civil defence unit headed by Damien Dollar, who has done tremendous work along with the volunteers there. Huge amount of work, even on the centre itself, in terms of improving it. The questions I suppose I have is that, at the moment, the funding model is 70-30, 70% Department of Defence, and you might just tell me what the budget was last year. I think there's a difference of a couple of million, just a saw figure of 3.5 million in the middle of all of the other figures we're trying to watch over the last two weeks. You might just tell me what that is, but 70-30, local authority provides authority, but in actual practice what's happening is it's now becoming more like 50-50. And, you know, the local authority obviously has a lot of other demands on it. Just there's a concern there that at local authority level, I suppose, local authority members, that they've been asked to come up with more than, you know, more than they should. And, of course, overall then, civil defence itself, that that has adequate funding. And you might just address that for me, please. The boat and vehicle replacement, you know, look, just to acknowledge, you know, sometimes we complain about shortcomings, but really the equipment has, you know, has improved. I have a family member in it and I'm more familiar with it than I used to be, even though when I was a local authority member I had a good way of interaction with it, but I've got a better look at it over the last seven or eight years. But in terms of the replacement of equipment and vehicles and boats, it's a normal reliance on the Dormant Fund. And in relation to the department in terms of required permissions for boat operations, do you have all of those? I'm trying to keep my questions short. I just want to say something to you about, and also to Mr Macmoreland, you know, I've read your note that you provided for the committee, your opening statements very carefully last night. And, you know, it's good and very detailed and all that. But just a concern I have is that, and, you know, there's a lot of acronyms in it, I'll have to come back to it and keep checking what each one of them meant. But, you know, there's a lot happening up there. But on the ground there's a real problem. And I'll tell you what, there's a real problem, and it's shown up in recent storm and recent emergencies, that there isn't a local authority staff in the municipal districts to deal with problems. If you have an overseer that's half a dozen general operatives, they're the people who will go out and carry out the preventative maintenance work. And because that's not carried out, you have flooding. Sometimes it's because of a shopping trolley stuck in a weir or a pallet or, you know, brambles or whatever else, as simple as that, and you have a whole housing estate flooded. You know, just that basic maintenance work to prevent that type of issue. And the same with DSB, by the way. DSB paired back its core staff in recent years and dependent on contractors, which sometimes can be very hard to get and definitely very difficult in a storm, in an emergency. You can't put your hand on them. You can put your hand on your own workers, you know. And I'm just highlighting that, and it's an issue. You know, while it's all happening up there at your level, and I mean this in a very respectful way, on the ground, you know, it's the people who... It's the people who pawn the high-vis jackets and the protective clothing and who go out there in all weathers to try and get things back together again and to, you know, to alleviate flooding. There's a real problem and a real shortage of front-line workers in the local authorities, and there's no way of getting around this. You know, it's shown every day, and I'm sure other public representatives here can see it, and county councillors definitely see it, because they're the first line of defence, and they're the ones the public turn to. So that needs to be addressed. And the volunteers, you're going to go from... You're trying to go from 1,800 to around 3,500. I hope that works out. You know, and it seems to be... You know, there seems to be recruits coming in. I know in Leash there's, I think, some new recruits coming in. But just to say as well that, you know, the volunteer ESOS is very important, but I'm not sure about this because how this should be dealt with. But there may be an issue there, and Senator Crockwell mentioned, you know, Labour law and all of that, but I have heard the mobile phone going off maybe at 12 o'clock or 1 o'clock in the morning, and the heavy boots going down the stairs, and, you know, then they have to turn in for work the next morning, up for half six to go into work. And it could be a call-out for a rescue, search and rescue in the Shlee Blooms. And there's been a good few of those now in the last year. How we handle that, because, I mean, an employer, you know, can you tell an employer I can't be in because I've been out all night with civil defence? I don't know. I just want to put that, you know, but I think the volunteer ESOS was very important. That's it. That's my lot, just if we can answer that. Thank you. And just to say, just to say well done, by the way, I read the book, I read some of the booklet on the 75th anniversary. I intend reading more of it. All right? Thanks. Thanks, Deputy Stanley. And again, thank you to your family member for volunteering with civil defence. And also thank you to your civil defence officer who works very closely with us. To answer your question, I have seen the unit. When I joined civil defence two years ago, we made a point of visiting all of the units across the country, all 28 of them, because we wanted to understand how the units were operating, what obstacles they had to operating in each area, et cetera. So that work was completed, and we're delighted that Leash have the new unit, and we do appreciate the support from the Leash Local Authority in that regard. Just recently, the civil defence officer in Leash went to the UK for us, actually, because we're trying to broaden and have a national approach to search and rescue, and we're looking to align with the Association of Lowland Search and Rescue in the UK. So your civil defence officer, who's an expert in the area of search and rescue, represented us there with someone from Kilkenny. So I think that's just evidence of how we're working with the civil defence units and how important it is that we use their expertise on the ground. You spoke about funding, and I want to come at it from three angles, really. The first is that, yes, our grant is of the order of 6.5 million. That is broken down into operational grants of about 3.5 million. So that may be where you're seeing that other figure. And we have increased our budget by 15% over the last few years, and we will continue to seek increases, provided that we can be assured that we're able to use the funding, because we don't want to seek funding and then not have the time to do it properly in accordance with procurement rules and value for money. So it's trying to find the balance between the two of those. I know there is a perception that the funding is 70%, 30%, and moving towards 50-50. But I would counter that by saying that we have moved a lot of the procurement in-house. So while the operational grant is run on a 70-30 basis, we have actually moved to bring central procurement in-house for uniforms, for all of our personal protective equipment, for the boats, the... Are you saying that the department is buying it centrally rather than each unit? Yes, exactly. That's OK. So that kind of addresses that a little bit. While you might be seeing that, and certainly the local authority, do make a good contribution to civil defence, it is also the case that we're ring-fencing a pool of money centrally so that we can provide the same uniforms, the same PPE, we can buy drones, sonar, et cetera, and particularly now the rest centre and evacuation centre equipment, because what we want to make sure is that all units have the same type of equipment, they're all able to interoperate effectively. So we need to look at it in the round. It's not just the operational grants, it's the central money that's being spent as well. You're correct that we do use dormant account funding very significantly. I think when I looked back, it was 2.7 million over the past five years. That is fairly significant funding, and we have sought that again this year. We have sought another 400,000 to do more in terms of upgrading our fleet and boats. Certainly we do want to reduce our reliance on that, but for now it's available and we will take it and we will upgrade the fleet. I think it's important that we do that central procurement and that we continue to upgrade the fleet, because the breadth of activity of civil defence is significant, and regulation now is significant. So it's really important that we get that central training, central standard regulation guidelines, et cetera, in place, so that we can better manage the regulation and governance and keep our volunteers safe. You mentioned whether we have everything that we need in the boat space. We are in the process of looking at the boat licensing piece. It is a challenge for us, because civil defence's breadth of activity is so vast. We could be involved in search and rescue, we could be involved in sampling water with the local authorities. We may be required to recover a body in the event of a missing person search. That might require guards or somebody else to be on the boat. So there is a challenge there between the passenger boat licence and the use of the boat for other activities that we are negotiating at the moment. And I do take a point about the labour law. I think that's a wider policy piece that we do need to consider as we move forward. I know that other countries mandate volunteering days, and that is paid for from the government, but it's a much wider issue that would have to be considered in the round and true extensive policy engagement. But it is something that we're aware of, and as part of our engagement with CDOs, we do ask them to be very aware of the response from volunteers and to manage that as best as they can so that we protect the health and safety of volunteers. But at present, there is no protocol there or no rule there in terms of what happens, we say, with a volunteer that's out during the night in terms of the next morning. No, and it wouldn't be within my policy space, to be honest. What we try to do within our policy space is to manage the hours that they do respond for with civil rights. And could I just ask, Cairlock, just with your permission, in terms of the front-line staff, particularly in local authorities, but also in DSP, you know, just a response from that, because that is, if you have an overseer in a whole municipal district with just a handful of workers, a handful of outdoor workers, you're in trouble in terms of maintenance when the emergency does come, in terms of building up two emergencies, it compounds the situation. And actually, the response then as well, you don't have the sufficient numbers to respond. Is that being discussed at any level? That's not within my space, to be honest. Well, Mr Moreland might respond to that, I thought. Thank you, Deputy. And just to reiterate what you said, in the praise for the local authority workers during crisis, it's phenomenal the work that they do, particularly in preparing the treating roads and the chainsaw crews that go out and clear those roads when we have damage during storms. I highlighted to the Senator that we have a lead government department model, so I need to be very careful that I don't slip into another department's policy area. But what I can say is that we are working with colleagues now to ensure that we plug the utilities in, so it's not just about DSP, but Ishka Aaron and the telecommunications providers that we plug them into the local authority system. I know you don't have to step on anyone else's toes, I understand that, but can I ask you, within the emergency plan unit, is it recognised that unless you have sufficient staff on the ground, is this issue, in other words, has it come up on your radar, because I'd be very concerned if it hasn't? Deputy, I wouldn't stray into another department's policy area, because we wouldn't have any responsibility for local government. No, no, I haven't. But it's just, I think it's an issue that needs to be, you know, if you're involved in emergency planning, I don't think that we can let the day go without highlighting this. Thanks, Deputy, and we'll note that. Thank you. Yeah, and I absolutely agree. I think it is obviously very significant for the whole of the operation. There's no point in having all these strategies and plans and everything else. If we don't... We don't have people to implement them. Yes, if we don't have enough feet in the ground, so that's something maybe even we'll discuss in private session to see how we can bring forward to highlight that on the committee. Thank you.