Suspicion between different arms of the emergency services and a lack of clarity about their respective roles must be overcome if Ireland is to cope with a major emergency, the Emergency Planning Officer with the Health Service Executive has said.
Pat O'Riordan, speaking at a conference on Major Emergency Planning at the weekend, said a new national Framework for Emergency Management, which is due to be published in coming months, would "hopefully" make things "better". He said there had been problems in the past of different arms of the emergency services, being unsure and suspicious about the roles of other groups.
"A lot of that was due to misunderstanding, and things being badly explained. Hopefully, when things are written more explicitly things will be better." He said the framework, which had been produced by an interdepartmental group on emergency planning, was now with Government and would begin being rolled out in coming months.
The framework plan divides the State into eight regions, coinciding roughly with the old health board regions, and goes into thorough detail on how the services and the voluntary sector will respond to such issues as dealing with the injured and casualties, the role of hospitals, the role of the coroner, decontamination of people and areas, psycho-social care and public health.
"Flu is the big emergency we are working on. That's the one where there's a lot of preparation going on." However, there were also contingency plans for a terrorist attack or nuclear accident.
Incidents have been divided into five categories, ranging from normal, through serious, very serious and catastrophic, and again in terms of planning for them into ranges of probability, from very likely to extremely unlikely.
"It doesn't make sense to plan for them in detail" if they are considered to be "very unlikely" to happen, Mr O'Riordan said.
The conference, which was organised by the Irish Red Cross, also heard from David Donegan, senior officer with London Resilience, the state body responsible for emergency planning in London, on his experiences during the London bombings last July. He said it was vital that all agencies were prepared to work in an integrated way in the event of a major emergency.
Transport services, water services, communication providers, the police, and ambulance services, "need to be integrated and able to work together quickly."
"Partnership needs to be expanded and explained. It's not good enough to bring everyone together in a room and say 'that's a plan'. You need to work in a way that you ensure you don't trip each other up, you complement each other." He said planning for emergencies in London was underpinned by legislation, in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, which brings together the emergency services, utilities, transport, local authorities, business sector, the health services and the voluntary sector.
"The voluntary sector has a particularly crucial role in assisting society to be resilient," he said. "The role is supporting the state agencies." They were especially important in providing social, counselling and practical assistance with such issues as tending to less seriously injured, providing food and water, debriefing witnesses, and helping worried families and the bereaved.