These roles would be supplemental to the primary emergency response agencies and would be invoked when requested by a statutory agency.

Support or augment the response in hospitals to conventional major incidents.
The Emart

As a specialist response to the scene of conventional major incidents with multi casualties

The function of EMART is such that it will need to draw on expertise from a number of organisations. It will be primarily the DHSS&PS within Northern Ireland with particular reference to acute care, Northern Ireland Ambulance Service, Northern Ireland Fire Brigade and elements of the Health Service connected with primary care e.g., General Practitioners.

Each of these sections will bring to the overall team their own expertise, and will be involved with cross training in other disciplines. This would enable each of the team members to be comfortable and familiar operating in environments normally outside of their remit. This will add value to the overall team and give it a strength and flexibility of response currently not present within Northern Ireland.

The members of EMART for a specific operation can be selected from the whole on the basis that their skills are relevant to the task being given. Therefore, not all members of the team will be required to respond on every given occasion.

Each member of the team will bring to it their own expertise. Therefore, Ambulance Service will bring pre-hospital paramedical-based skills and patient assessment, treatment handling and mass casualty management. The Fire Service will bring to it their expertise in dealing with fires, hazardous incidents and rescue. The acute DHSS team members will be skilled in providing patient assessment and treatment and have pre-hospital experience where possible. It is suggested that these core skills can be built upon to include expertise in confined space rescue/urban search and rescue, familiarisation with rope work for cliff rescue, water rescue. This core team will also be available to be invested with specialist knowledge on counter measures for CBRN incidents for example.

A comprehensive training programme is essential to develop capability. This should be intensive initially and maintained at a less intensive but constant rate. This is essential to maintain competency and volunteer enthusiasm. Regular exercising will form an integral part of training. Exercises will be multi-agency where appropriate.

There are a variety of roles and competencies that need to be developed to make EMART a worthwhile addition to the emergency capability in Northern Ireland. It is not possible to deliver all these roles and competencies in the initial phase of EMART development.

It is therefore proposed that EMART initially trains and equips its personnel in the priority areas. These priorities are under discussion but there is a pressing need to have a guaranteed CBRN capability. It is proposed that CBRN should be the first priority for EMART.

A robust communications network will need to be in position to facilitate call-out and deployment. This is a high priority.

EMART volunteers will require some personal issue equipment e.g. PPE. This will allow volunteers to rapidly deploy from work or home. Other equipment will require central storage and a delivery system.

There are additional benefits to that organisation from having members within EMART. These are that the individuals will be invested in a high degree of additional training crossing their normal work boundaries; this endows them with an ability to communicate and work in pre-hospital multi-disciplinary environments with the respect of other responding organisations.