An error which led to the fire service being sent to the wrong address in Co Kilkenny last month is being investigated by the emergency services.
A 999 call about a house fire at Keatingstown, Mullinavat, south Co Kilkenny, resulted in fire crews being dispatched to the townland of Keatingstown 20 miles farther north at Troyswood, close to Kilkenny city.
Ciarán Cormican, chief fire officer for Kilkenny, said that when the error was discovered, fire crews were sent to deal with the fire in Mullinavat, but at that stage, "a huge amount of damage had already been done".
No one was injured in the blaze, which occurred during the morning of December 18th, but the house is no longer habitable and the owner has gone to live with relatives.
Since November, 999 calls requesting fire services in Co Kilkenny are being routed through a control centre in Dublin which then alerts local firefighters by calling their pagers. Previously such calls would have been put through to the local fire station.
The new system, known as the computer aided mobilisation project (Camp), has been established by the Department of the Environment and consists of three control centres to which calls from around the State are diverted on a regional basis.
The centres are at Limerick (for the Munster area); Dublin (for Leinster, Cavan and Monaghan) and Castlebar (for Connacht and Donegal).
The system has still to be extended to the entire country but the Dublin centre already handles calls from Dublin city and county, as well as Cos Carlow, Cavan, Kilkenny, Laois, Longford, Meath, Monaghan, Westmeath and Wexford.
Mr Cormican said that Kilkenny, "like every county in Ireland", has numerous examples of two or more townlands sharing the same name, but he had provided Dublin with a list which differentiated these by listing each alongside the name of the nearest town or village.
He said it was "too early to comment" on the efficiency of the new system.
Fine Gael Senator John Paul Phelan yesterday asked what was wrong with the old system. "You need local knowledge to get the fire services into rural areas where umpteen townlands have the same name."
Mr Phelan lives in the townland of Smithstown of which there are "at least five" in Co Kilkenny - two in the Mullinavat area alone. He said post to his address "gets mixed up all the time".
Brian Purdue, a spokesman for Dublin Fire Brigade, which operates the east regional control centre, said "a full investigation is being carried out" and the outcome "will be made known to Kilkenny County Council as a matter of urgency".