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Dundalk Leader 28th January 2026
‘I LOVE THE DIVERSITY “For me, being a fire fighter is the best job in the world” OF MY JOB’ By Paul Byrne
By Paul Byrne
CASTLEBLAYNEY man Colm Lambe is currently the Acting Senior Assistant Chief Fire Officer at Dundalk Fire Station. He works in the fire prevention section where his daily tasks include issuing fire safety certificates and ensuring all buildings around the county are safe. “We get on average maybe 150160 certificates submitted to us each year and I assess them and maybe go back to the consultant and look for further information. When I am happy with everything I will then grant a fire safety cert. On receipt of the fire safety cert, the developer or builder can go ahead and build the building once they have that cert. “From a fire safety point of view we would be making sure that there are fire alarms, fire extinguishers, emergency lighting, access for the fire fighters to get into the building so they would be the main things we look at before handing out fire certs. “We also do a lot of inspections on buildings and under the Fire Service Act and we would prioritise the bigger venues such as hotels and nightclubs because obviously on occupancy alone there are going to be a lot more people in those venues so we try and prioritise those. For instance we recently did an inspection in Ridleys Nightclub for a teenage disco and the first thing I would ask is how many people are in the building and making sure it’s not overcrowded. We’d check the escape routes are unobstructed, there’s no padlocks on emergency doors etc. We cover all of Louth and it’s a huge area. Just to break it up for you we have the Chief Fire Officer, Senior Assistant Fire Officer, I’m acting senior Assistant Fire Officer, and we have two assistant fire officers. And that team is broken into operations and prevention. “The great thing for me about working in the fire service is that no days are ever the same. It is so diverse. Every one in five weeks as a rostered officer we would go on call so if there’s a major incident we would take over the incident. The lads will go out, the operation crews, the station officer and his crew will go out but if they feel the incident has protracted they would call us as a rostered senior fire officer and we would attend the scene. That could be anything from a serious motorway incident or a huge house fore or industrial fire. Later
Dundalk man Paul McEneaney has been working as a fire fighter with Louth County Council Fire and Rescue Service for 18 years. Stationed in Dundalk, Sub Officer Paul believes he has the best job in the world and last year he even convinced his wife to join the fire service with his better half now stationed in Carlingford. According to Paul the job can be tough at times but it’s one he wouldn’t trade for anything. “From 2005 maybe, I was working in adventure centres teaching kayaking, canoeing, rock climbing and all that sort of stuff. I then spend the next summer kayaking in the French Alps and when I came back to Dundalk I seen the role of fireman advertised in the local newspaper and it kind of felt like a natural progression from what I was doing because there was a lot of technical similarities with the jobs and with the outdoor aspect as well so it went from there and I got it. “To get in to the fire service there is an element of fitness you have to have and a medical you have to pass. You have to come into the station and do a claustrophobia test, heights test, dexterity test and then once you pass all that you go to interview and then after the interview is your recruit course and once you pass that and your breathing apparatus course then you’re officially in the door. “I’m full time now but when I initially joined I was part of the retained service so the system was different then to what it is now. I was working in a shop in Dundalk at the time called Outdoor Exchange which I was managing for Jock McArdle. When I joined the Fire Service as a retained officer I had to get a letter from Jock to say I was allowed to leave work if a call came in from the fire station. I remember talking to some of the lads who were working in here at the time and they were telling me it was generally very quiet during the day and the majority of call outs were at night time. So I told that to Jock and he was happy with that. “On my very first day as a retained officer on call I was called out almost as soon as I got into work in Outdoor Exchange for two house fires and a shop fire and I was literally gone for the whole day and it’s easy to say Jock wasn’t too best pleased, considering I sold it to him as ‘no I won’t be out much during the day at all” laughs Paul. “I’ve been doing this job a long time now and although I
Acting Senior Assistant Chief Fire Officer Colm Lambe. on that day you could be back in the office doing a fire safety cert or you might be doing an inspection of a building. “Recently we’ve been doing quite a number of inspections of the IPAS buildings which there are quite a few of in Louth. And buildings like that would be considered high risk purely down to the numbers in them. And then we would also deliver primary school programmes where the crews will go out and deliver fire safety talks to 3rd and 4th class kids about fire safety in the home, smoke alarms and all the rest. And I’d oversee that as well with the crew. Colm, originally from Castleblayney has been with the local authority since 2007, beginning his career as a graduate engineer in the housing section before moving on to an assistant engineer post. In 2019 he threw his name in the hat for a post that came up in the fire section and it’s a move he is glad he made. “As I said earlier I really love the diversity of the job. I have a civil engineering background so I love assessing the fire certs and looking at the drawings coming in for building projects. With regards to the operations side of the job I would say it can be tough going. It’s a tough gig and in fairness to the lads here that are doing that side of the job they are fantastic. Dundalk and Drogheda are both full time stations while we have Carlingford Ardee and Dunleer as retained stations. Here in Dundalk the station is manned 24/7 365 days a year. There’s generally five maybe six on a crew at any given time.
“Obviously in this job you can see some traumatic things and there is a CISM system (Critical Incident Stress Management) which we offer to the crews if there is something serious like that horrendous car accident on the Ardee Road before Christmas for example. They can talk to a professional about what happened and if they want to relive what happened and get it off their chest that option is there for them. Some guys take it up but others don’t as sadly they become accustomed to it. “It’s all men here at the station but that is changing and changing for the better. We have a recruits course on here at the moment and I think we have six female firefighters on the course and we have a female firefighter sub officer from Carlingford and Dunleer and we will have up to seven or eight female firefighters by the end of the year. “The biggest cause of house fires at the moment is probably the likes of batteries from E-Scooters. Maybe an E-Scooter charging in a communal hallway in an apartment block which overheats. That has come across our table a couple of times recently. Then you have the likes of phone chargers, overloading sockets and stuff like that. “It’s a great job and there’s loads of scope for promotion and loads of room to better yourself if you put your head down and work hard. As I said earlier the operations side of things is tougher but it is a very important job and one which the boys do brilliantly every single day,” concludes Colm.
Sub Officer Paul McEneaney. wouldn’t say you get nervous going out on a call you are definitely conscious of what you could be going into. We are training all the time and every shift we work we are doing drills here in the station so there is constant drills which help us prepare for those calls and what we might come across. We work with the same crew all the time so the six of us are very familiar with each other and we rely on each other and help each other on the job. It’s always challenging. Now I’m a sub officer on the crew so at times I’m taking charge of the incidents so it’s a bit different then as you’re making decisions on what is happening and how to deal with the situations. “The six of us in our crew get on really well which is a huge bonus. There’s six different personalities there and thankfully we all gel together well. The craic is good and you deal with things the best you can and sometimes the best way to deal with the particularly tough call outs is to just talk it out with each other over a cup of tea in the Recreation Room table here in the station. We’ve had a couple of nasty jobs recently you know and I find that the best way to deal with stuff like that is to just talk about it amongst ourselves. “It can be tough to leave the job at work and not to take it home depending on what you are dealing with and I suppose for me personally it’s when you’re dealing with jobs were kids are in trouble it’s always that little bit harder to deal with than other incidents. Especially when you have kids at home you kind of think of your own you know? “Having that good crew around you and not just the crew we have a great bunch of lads in the station and you know that you can go and talk to anybody if needs be.
“Things have changed since I started in here 18 years ago and there is a more onus on our health now compared to years ago and that’s just thanks to recent studies highlighting the likes of carcinogens and stuff like that. It used to be the case that when you were finished working on a house fire you’d come out and throw your breathing apparatus in the truck. Nowadays we don’t put that in the truck anymore. “We’re now bagging that so we are not bringing the carcinogens into the truck with us. Obviously technology is always getting better but then again the budget will determine what technology we can buy so that’s above my pay grade with regards to that sort of stuff,” laughs Paul. When asked if it is a job that he would recommend to others, Paul laughs again saying that he convinced his wife to join last year. “So my wife is now just over a year in the service. She is with Carlingford fire service. She was very apprehensive about joining but she is loving it so far. She’s in a different station which is great and will help our marriage last a little longer which is great. “For me, I find this to be the best job in the world. I could not see myself working anywhere else. I love the challenge of it, I find the job very rewarding when you are able to help someone in times of need. I always like to push myself and challenge myself and everytime the hooter goes off it’s a challenge. You’re going out and you’re working with different personalities, you’re working with different scenarios and I enjoy that aspect of it. I find it a very rewarding job, and I’m not necessarily talking financially, just rewarding in the sense that you were able to help somebody,” concludes Paul.
Ancillary report funded by Coimisiún na Meán’s Local Democracy Reporting Scheme