Castlerea councillor Pascal Fitzmaurice says a house fire in the town over the weekend has shown the urgent need for the re-opening of the local fire station.
The Fianna Fail councillor had proposed a motion at last week's monthly meeting of the local authority calling for the station to be re-opened after its closure of five years.
While members of the council were told a review carried out in 2020 had shown no need for the station to be operational, Pascal Fitzmaurice says an average response time of half an hour is not acceptable.
Two units from Ballaghaderreen and Ballyhaunis attended the house fire on Saturday night but he says if the local station was open it could have responded much sooner
"The fire in Castlerea was a very extensive fire. The lady was very lucky to escape the fire with minor injuries. I do not accept a response time of 30 minutes for Castlerea for a town of our size, a growing town. You can get a report that says 30 minutes is fine, but it's not. It's shown here that if we had a fire service in Castlerea, those firefighters would've been there in 6 minutes".
