Mr. Christopher England:

I will kick off with the first few of the Deputy's questions. As to how we are tasked, the tasking for mountain rescues is through the 999-112 system. An injured person or someone who is concerned about a lost person makes a 999 call and requests the assistance of mountain rescue. That call is managed by An Garda Síochána, which then will task the local team in the area concerned. Consequently, if someone is lost in the Wicklow mountains, the Garda will task the Dublin-Wicklow and the Glen of Imaal mountain rescue teams. If a person is lost in County Kerry, the Kerry Mountain Rescue Team will get the local page. It comes out through a text system and on to the team organisation. From there, we then make contact, get the details of the call and then operate and manage the entire search, recovery and transportation back out thereafter. We then close the loop on those communications back to An Garda Síochána by giving it a brief update as the operation is ongoing and close it off to say it is complete, it all has been handed over and what are the details.

In respect of the Deputy's question on equipment, most teams will provide the baseline personal protective equipment, PPE, which will include waterproof jackets, over-trousers and helmets as a base minimum. That is what we aspire towards. Everything else they wear, including their base layers, trousers, fleeces and hats is all personally bought. Probably the biggest and most important items to wear when going onto the mountain are one's boots and people as individuals will buy those and replace them themselves. The rest of the rescue equipment, such as the stretchers, ropes, land rovers and specialist medical equipment is all centrally purchased by each of the teams and each team manages its own equipment. The teams will consider the long-term replacement of that equipment, which comes out of our funding. Part of the funding comes to replace team members' jackets and helmets, right through to ropes, carabiners and major purchases of Land Rovers and so on.

As for helicopters, new Coast Guard machines have just been rolled out nationwide and we have seen great use for helicopters from the old Sikorsky helicopters right through to the new ones. They are an invaluable tool on many occasions. The difficulty we have is they fly under restricted services because of the environment of safety under which they work. When the cloud comes down, they cannot fly in the mountains. They primarily are marine-operated machines and coming into the mountains is a different environment for them. They are very big, have a hard down-wash and a range of safety factors comes with them. When one is on a steep cliff, the last thing one wants is to have a helicopter sitting right over one's head with a heavy down-wash that potentially could blow someone off a cliff. Consequently, we also must consider this point when we task a helicopter, to make sure it is safe both for our people on the ground and for the crew when they come in. Ultimately, the pilot will make his or her own judgment on whether to come in but I must state they are a valuable tool. When used, they are a valuable tool and we thank the Coast Guard for its services in that regard. It is very good.