Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 13 Feb 2002

Vol. 548 No. 3

Written Answers. - Marine Rescue Services.

Bernard J. Durkan

Question:

101 Mr. Durkan asked the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources the degree to which air-sea rescue services are equipped in terms of craft, technology and personnel, day and night, to meet emergency requests; the turn out time in such cases; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5012/02]

Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources (Mr. Fahey):

The overall responsibility for marine emergency management has been assigned to the director, Irish Coast Guard IRCG, in accordance with section 4(1)(c), section 4(1)(l), and section 9 of the Public Service Management Act, 1997.

Part of the IRCG responsibility is search and rescue services for persons in distress within the Ireland marine search and rescue region – IMSRR, inland rivers, lakes and waterways, littoral area and cliffs of Ireland and the off-shore islands.

The Coast Guard has 81 full-time staff and approximately 864 volunteers. It manages and operates three co-ordination-communication centres at Dublin, Malin Head and Valentia, 16 remote marine band VHF radio sites and 52 coastal emergency response stations. The Coast Guard has between seven and nine co-ordination staff on duty at any one time.

The Coast Guard has two medium load-carrying marine emergency helicopters, one based at Dublin Airport and the other is based at Shannon Airport. These all weather helicopters are available for marine emergency response on a 24 hour, 365 day basis. It is planned that a third Coast Guard medium load-carrying marine emergency helicopter will be based at Waterford Airport from 1 May 2002 replacing the Air Corps inshore helicopter. Initially the service will be restricted to 12 hours per day. However, from 1 July a full 24 hour service will commence.

In addition to its own resources the Coast Guard has a number of declared resources available to it on a 24 hour, 365 day basis. These include an Air Corps light load-carrying helicopter based at Finner Army Camp, County Donegal, and an Air Corps daylight only inshore helicopter based at Waterford Airport. The RNLI has 31 lifeboat stations, the Coast Guard has 14 boat stations and the Community Inshore Rescue Service (CIRS) has nine boat stations around the coast.

Marine emergency helicopters are retained in a state of readiness of not more than 15 minutes from 7.30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and not more than 45 minutes outside of these times 24 hour per day. Marine emergency helicopters are positioned so that: they can reach, by day, 40 nautical miles off-shore in one hour, and they can reach, by night or in bad weather, 100 nautical miles in two hours.

The RNLI lifeboats provide cover out to 50 nautical miles off the coast. In fair weather lifeboats can reach virtually any point out to 50 nautical miles from the coast in two and a half hours. The average launch time for an all-weather lifeboat is 12.35 minutes and for an inshore lifeboat is 7.47 minutes. The CIRS rescue boats provide cover to 3-5 nautical miles. The average launch time is 10-15 minutes.

The Coast Guard can also call on Naval Service vessels and divers, Air Corps fixed-wing aircraft, the Gardaí and its divers and the UK Coastguard and all vessels at sea to assist them in their response.