Retained firefighters are set to escalate their industrial action in the continuing row over pay and conditions.
It follows a meeting of the Retained Fire Fighter Committee this afternoon.
The SIPTU Union, which represents around 2,000 retained firefighters across 200 stations around the country, has now informed management that, as of 8am this Saturday, 12 August, all stations will "go dark" and will have no internal communications other than life saving information.
The SIPTU union said the escalation was due to failure by the Government to respond to what it called their legitimate concerns.
SIPTU Public Administration and Community Division Organiser, Karan O Loughlin said: "If this does not encourage management back to the table, then on Saturday, 19 August, an additional one station will close each week in each county. Stations around the country are already closed fifty per cent of the time because of the refusal by management to agree adequate cover arrangements with fire fighters."
She said this was because many of the stations don't have enough staff to respond to calls and that this situation would now escalate.
She added: "It has been nine weeks since this industrial action commenced and the silence from the Government has been astonishing. It has abandoned the retained fire service, leaving fire fighters at the side of the road in an effort to break their dispute."
She said that strategy would not work and that men and women working as retained firefighters remained steadfast in their belief that the service would collapse if adequate measures were not taken to address the current recruitment and retention crisis.
Members of the retained service are part-time firefighters who are paid an annual retainer for being on-call.
They resumed strike action at the end of July after voting to reject a Labour Court recommendation aimed at resolving a dispute over pay and conditions.
The Labour Court had recommended that the retainer be increased by between 24% and 32.7%.
The main firefighters' union, SIPTU, described the proposals as a major disappointment and members voted by an overwhelming majority to reject the Labour Court recommendation.
Sinn Féin spokesperson on Workers' Rights, Louise O’Reilly has said today’s decision by the retained firefighters "comes as a direct result of Minister Darragh O’Brien missing in action".
She called on Minister O'Brien to intervene and find a resolution to the dispute.
"What the retained firefighters are looking for, and what we in Sinn Féin called for in a motion put forward by John Brady and Eoin Ó Broin earlier this year, is for the government to act on the 13 recommendations arising out of its own report calling for reform of the fire service, which Minister O’Brien informed the Dáil he supported last November.
"Darragh O’Brien cannot keep running away from his responsibilities. He must work with the retained firefighters and with their representatives in SIPTU to bring about a just and fair resolution to this industrial disput," she said.
