A Leas-Chathaoirligh, I welcome the Minister to the House and I thank him for the courtesy of attending to respond to my motion.
At this stage the basic facts of the Celtic Pride ferry tragedy are very well known. The Celtic Pride was in operation last year on the Cork-Swansea ferry route. On the morning of 12 August two children, Catherine and James Tomlins, were found dead in their cabin just before the vessel arrived in Cork and last month the Department of the Marine published the report into the investigation of that tragedy. From this it is clear beyond any doubt that the children were overcome by the toxic fumes from the ship's sewerage system which reached them through the toilet adjoining the cabin in which they slept. This happened because, according to the report, the ship's sewerage system was badly designed and badly maintained. These deaths happened following repeated complaints by previous passengers about unpleasant smells and inefficient clearance of the flushing system on board ship.
What happens next in regard to this case? The investigation itself was excellent as far as it went and clearly its sole purpose was to establish the cause of the tragedy. It has done this very clearly and my only quarrel with the report is that it took six months to complete and given the restricted nature of the investigation, six months seems an excessively long time to have to wait for a report. However, the restricted nature of the investigation immediately highlights the need to go further.
We now know beyond all doubt what caused the deaths of those two children. What we do not know is, who is to blame? We need to know because we are talking about human lives. These two innocent children were returning from a family summer holiday on the Continent. Their deaths need not have happened; their deaths could have been foreseen. In the chilling words of the Department's report, which leap out at us from the pages, this was "an accident waiting to happen".
It appears wrong that the only function of the Department of the Marine in this matter is to ascertain the cause. Not so long ago the British ferry, the Herald of Free Enterprise sank and there was a fullscale public inquiry which did not shrink from attributing blame. If the Department of the Marine does not have the same powers should we not move quickly to ensure that it gets them? Alternatively, if it has those powers, why were they not used in this case? This was the immediate concern of the public.
I stress that in seeking to attribute blame, people are not seeking retribution. The existence of a clear and effective mechanism for establishing blame is a very important part of the system for ensuring future safety on all our sea routes. People who are responsible for the safety of passengers should be in no doubt whatever that they will be brought to account if they fail that trust, and they will be brought to account swiftly.
Perhaps the Minister will have something to say about the progress of the Garda investigation into this matter, if indeed there is any progress to report at this time. I hope he will not tell us that there are difficulties because of the clash of legal jurisdiction in this matter, and I certainly hope he will not say that it is up to the parents of the children to seek civil redress. This is a matter of national importance and people affected by such a tragedy are entitled to feel that the State will protect and vindicate their personal interests. However, even when our minds are put at rest about that aspect of this case there are further matters of imporance flowing from this investigation and from this report.
What this tragedy has revealed is that there is an enormous gap in the regulations governing the safety of vessels at sea. The sewerage system which caused the deaths of these children did not, and still does not, fall within the scope of the licensing system for ships. This ship was certified as safe because the marine legislation does not cover the sewerage system. That fact will come as a profound shock to people who travel on ships because I am sure they thought they were better protected than that. In this context I commend the action the Department took in the wake of the accident in immediately alerting the EC and the international maritime authorities to the need to include the sewerage system in the design and operation standards of all sea-going vessels. I also commend the recommendations made in the report for further action in that area.
While I commend that response, I have to say it is hardly adequate. We are now shutting that stable door but other stable doors are still open. We do not know yet what other accidents are waiting to happen. Are we only to discover these hazards when tragedies happen such as that which befell the Tomlins children? Surely we cannot leave this matter there.
I suggest the need — and I see it as highly urgent — to set up a system of regular inspection of ferries that would go beyond existing statutory inspections. That would be pro-active and comprehensive; pro-active in the sense that it would take the initiative to prevent accidents even of a type that had never happended before, and comprehensive in that it would go beyond the letter of the present law to cover any possibility of danger to passengers no matter what the source. The aim of such a pro-active and comprehensive system of inspection should be to identify at the earliest possible stage and to eliminate all potential causes of tragic accidents.
We owe it, first, to the memory of the Tomlins children to do so and second to the travelling public, who are entitled to expect the State to guard their interest effectively in such matters and third, we owe it to our tourism industry, which depends crucially on access routes to this island. Irish tourism already suffers from the handicap that travel to Ireland is difficult and expensive for visitors and has no need of any shadow cast over the safety of the journey to Ireland. These considerations oblige us to go that extra mile and if this means leading the maritime world in matters of safety, so be it. There could hardly be a better reason to do so.
