Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I join in the welcome to Mountain Rescue Ireland and also commend the fantastic contribution of the volunteers. We all should recognise that all of this work is done on a volunteer basis - one can be called out at any hour of the day and night in any weather, and once one signs up for this, one is expected to go.

We should look at this in the wider context. Over the past ten years, the State has promoted hill-walking, hill-climbing and rural recreation as a major tourism growth area. We have also encouraged our population, with all the challenges of obesity, etc., to get more active and get out in the great outdoors, particularly on the mountains. I note that the figures for tourists stating that walking was an important part of their holiday were as low as 200,000 at their lowest approximately ten years and they have risen above 800,000. The Department and the Government have ambitions to grow those numbers and it is a significant source of revenue.

One must accept that where there are more hill-walkers, there will be more accidents, some of which are unavoidable. They will happen anyway and the one question the mountain rescue teams will not ask before they get them down off the mountain is whether they could have avoided it. If the State is serious about growing this sector, we must see mountain rescue as a necessary adjunct to that sector. One cannot have increasing numbers of hill-walkers without having comprehensive mountain rescue services. Those on the mountain, coming from other jurisdictions, will expect as of right that there would be somebody to take them down if they get into trouble.

The question is - who pays? In the past, all of us have faced the difficulty of joining an organisation to do something only to find we spend most of our time collecting funds. Most of us would rather get on with the business of the organisation. That is true in the case of mountain rescue, that one joins to give of one's time, effort, training and everything to go up the mountains to rescue hill-walkers and it is not good to find that one is spending a lot of time shaking a bucket. We should look at other rescue services. For example, the Coast Guard has been mentioned here, and, of course, we mentioned the helicopters. However, the other part of the Coast Guard is voluntary. Those Coast Guard members, with the boats around the coast, are volunteers but everything is paid for by the State because it is a State service. Civil Defence is a State service. Here, again, nobody expects the Civil Defence to shake a bucket outside the church because it is the State's service. The Red Cross is a voluntary organisation, not a State one, but it is very much a creature of the State. Quite rightly, there is funding given to the Order of Malta and to all of these services because they all are needed. The RNLI is fairly unique. Because of its long history and because it covers both Ireland and Britain, it probably has one of the most efficient fund-raising machines, and full-time offices, etc., to that end. It is unique, but we must recognise here also that it is a voluntary service and it has access to the funds.

We should consider this structurally. Is funding given by the Northern Ireland Executive to the northern part of the organisation? If so, who gives it? The delegates might provide information on that. The issue of an ongoing revenue stream must be tackled. The organisation was funded previously under the community and voluntary organisations heading. That is where the Pobal funding came from. One had to bid for that funding. It lasted for three years, and then one started again without certainty that one would win the lottery the next time. This committee needs to approach a Department and ask it to take the lead on this. In that regard, it would be very useful to get the view of Comhairle na Tuaithe on the extent to which it regards mountain rescue as part of its work in developing the whole hillwalking scene. I hope this committee, of which I am not a member, will follow this issue up with the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport.

Fáilte Ireland is represented on Comhairle na Tuaithe. I understand its representatives will be coming here today to examine the schedule. The view of Fáilte Ireland on the number of foreign tourists and revenue attracted by hillwalking is that hillwalking is much more significant than golf and angling.