Blazing a trail for female firefighters

Cavan’s first ever female Chief Fire Officer hopes to lead the way for other women to join the fire service. Sinéad Sweeney spoke to Gemma Good about her career in a male dominated role and her hopes for improving the fire service in County Cavan...

“You can be it if you can see it,” Sinéad tells the Celt, as she fixes her badge to her white shirt, and pulls on her formal CFO hat for a photo.

The mum of three has worked within the fire services of five other local authorities; Kildare, Cork county, Laois, in her home county of Tipperary, Wicklow and now Cavan - a glowing career spanning over 20 years. Sinéad joined the service as a graduate engineer before becoming a retained firefighter and, with her academic background, she found herself going up the ladder to assistant fire officer, assistant chief fire officer and senior assistant chief fire officer before reaching the top rung to become chief fire officer.

“I’ve worked under nine other chief fire officers, all of them male. I have never worked under a female before,” she reports.

While she has a wealth of experience, Sinéad is highly qualified for the job on paper too.

She holds an honours degree in Materials Science, a postgraduate diploma in Fire Safety Practice, a higher-level Certificate in Health, Safety and Environmental Management, while she also obtained a first-class honours Master of Business.

Just shy of three months in her new role, Sinéad has already made her way around all 10 fire stations in the county.

As she walks around the Cavan station, she points out faces and names in old photos and already knows by name the current firefighters who followed in the footsteps of the men in the frames.

While her own parents were not members of the fire service, Sinéad was guided by them in deciding what she wanted to do in life. Her father, John Sweeney, was an explosives technician and Sinéad recalls having an interest in the “boom and the bang” of his profession, while her late mum Mairead worked as a community nurse who visited elderly people, when Sinéad would have accompanied her.

She was also inspired by her grand aunt Sister Benedict who worked as a nun in Rome during World War II and, even though Sinéad wasn’t old enough to pronounce Benedict properly, she admired Auntie Nun from a young age.

“Ahead of her time,” is how she describes her great aunt, while also attributing this compliment to her late mother.

In 1994 the first female “ever” in Ireland joined the fire services, and it wasn’t so long before Sinéad would follow in her footsteps.

“I knew the local authority was where I wanted to go,” she recalls and, after graduating from the University of Limerick, Sinéad joined a graduate engineer programme with Kildare’s local authority.

It was there that the Chief Fire Officer came down the stairs one day “looked at all the boys in the room” and shared that there were vacancies in the fire service.

“I was the only one that sent in my application, I said I’d give it a go and, within six months, I figured out that this is it,” she says, delighted that she had found a job, which blended academia and “the empathic side of helping directly with the community”.

“The dynamic of it all, they just married together and, 24 years on, I’m still here.”

Sinéad joined the fire services in April 2001 when less than one in a hundred firefighters nationally were female.

She says it has “always been pretty notable” that she was “the female in the fire services”.

How was it working in a male dominated field? the Celt asks.

“I’m not shy, that definitely does help,” she responds.

“My parents both gave us a good upbringing. I was aware of who I was and comfortable with what I was. I just got on with it.

“My idea was that, if I start getting involved in the ‘she can’t do it’, it might sink in that I can’t do it and then I won’t do it.”

“Head down and get on with it,” Sinéad says, as if reciting a mantra she has repeated to herself several times during her career to date.

She is now one of three female CFOs in all of Ireland, where there are 27 fire divisions. Her comrades serve in Meath and Sligo.

“We are about three per cent nationally,” she says.

“We’re getting there, slowly but surely,” she adds, pulling over her Women’s Fire Service Network Association badge, which carries the logo ‘Fire up the Future’.

Sinéad is secretary of the national steering group, which was set up to “prove to everyone that you can do it”.

She remembers conference rooms filled with “all males” where the reporters would always want to speak with the female firefighters, who were “traditionally hiding in there trying to not make a big hullabaloo”.

Sinéad continued: “Now we’re just all about embracing it. If we don’t show how important it is to have females within the role, then we’re never going to get the next generation in.”

Now a pink fire hat sits on the top of the filing cabinet in the CFO’s office at Cavan Fire Station.

Taking over from Noel O’Reilly who has moved to the CFO position in Leitrim, Sinéad knows she has some big boots to fill, however says she has “settled in well”.

“It’s an easy county to settle in,” she praises.

“Geography wise, from west to east, you’re a long county,” she observes, looking at a brown coloured map of the county on the office wall, which is broken up into several districts.

Sinéad’s managing Cavan’s 120 retained firefighters, also senior officers, administrative staff and mechanics.

“That’s only fire, I also do building control,” she says; while the civil defence crews also work under her guidance.

“All day, every day is so different and you are dealing with a wide variety of tasks from all aspects,” she said, mentioning within building control of dealing with the pre-built environment, looking at foundations, occupancy and certification.

Raising awareness on fire safety in the home

Currently, she’s keen to raise awareness on the “notable increase” in the number of fire fatalities in the home in the last 12 months, “particularly those elderly folk who would be more vulnerable”.

“We are just trying to raise awareness to make sure that the vulnerable people in our community have working smoke alarms in the home.”

Sinéad appealed to those “particularly” who are living on their own, and also asked that those caring for, or visiting, the elderly check if they have a working fire alarm.

Ear to the ground

Despite being on a roster with her fellow senior officers, meaning one person is on call from Monday to Monday, Sinéad’s emergency control radio is constantly on as she gets to know what crews are responding to calls.

No calls come in while the Celt visits, but you never know when it could crackle into life. It’s part of her commitment to get to know the county and those working under her, how the crews speak to each other and how they radio in.

“To get the deep core knowledge basically of how Cavan Fire Service works,” she furthers.

“Because I’m new I keep my ear to the ground on everything that is going on, I get it in real time.”

Cavan Fire Service also assists bordering counties Leitrim, Monaghan and Fermanagh.

“It’s to understand those relationships as fast as I can because there’s a lot of moving pieces and I’m just trying to build that jigsaw.

“The rest of the gentlemen are here for 15-plus years. I have to match that pretty fast,” she says.

The 47-year-old hopes to bring a “modern approach” to the fire service.

In “the next generation of further developments coming through” she predicts advances in technology and in building constructions, while she also hopes to modernise the services for communities, which she says are also “developing”.

“We have more diverse communities as well, it’s not just male or female anymore, they’re coming from all different nationalities, to adapt to all that too.”

Being a woman in the service, Sinéad hopes that she will lead the way for others to join the service who “might not have seen it as a career option”. There is currently one female retained firefighter in Dowra, with another who started in Kingscourt on Monday.

“In the retained service, if you want to be a firefighter you can still have a professional career.”

“The retained service is part time, they work off alerters, they’re only required to turn up for emergency incidents during alerters and we have week-on/week-off rotators now.

“We’ll give the rest if you give us the commitment,” she says.

On top of her work duties, Sinéad currently resides in Wicklow with her husband and three teenage boys. While in Cavan, she lives with friends in Cootehill, however a decision to move her family, which also includes a dog and three goldfish, to the Breffni county is on the horizon.