Mr. Christopher England:

I would have trained Dublin-Wicklow and the Glen of Imaal teams in Wicklow. We trained with our local gardaí last year. We ran a major local exercise with them, including the HSE, An Garda Síochána, Civil Defence as observers and mountain rescue. That was to ensure that people understand the personalities and also how each of them works, as well as the benefits and pros and cons of each one. In that way, we can understand how they work together. That was very successful.

Deputy Ó Cuív commented on increased numbers of walkers using the hills. I was team leader of the Dublin-Wicklow mountain rescue group and last year we had 109 call-out operations for a voluntary organisation of 42 members. We will be 30 years old this year, but we still do not have a base. Those operations were run out of the back of a Transit van.

The operations ranged from multi-day searches for missing persons - unfortunately, a lot of them were suicide victims - right through to live tourist casualties getting lost in clouds and snow. A large number of people got stuck in snow in upland areas. I joined the mountain rescue service 14 years ago when, traditionally, the majority of calls were on a Sunday afternoon. One could almost set the clock by the 3.30 p.m. call-out. In more recent years, along with marketing Ireland as a tourist destination, we have seen not just an increase in the number of calls but also an increase in when they come. They are no longer spread across Sunday afternoons but can happen on any day of the week. Last Thursday, I was on a call-out for an injured walker on a Thursday afternoon when I should have been at work. The Friday before that I happened to be on a day off and Kerry mountain rescue were out at 6 o'clock on a Friday morning to search for, and treat, an injured walker.

As a voluntary organisation, we are not just seeing numbers increasing, but such incidents can now happen on any day of the week when our volunteers are asked to respond. On top of that, I am asking them to go out and shake a bucket on Sundays. It can put a lot of stress on their work and family time. That is a major difficulty when we are trying to train, rescue, do our own daily work and have some family time. If one of those burdens - the fund-raising element - could be taken off us, it would be of massive assistance to mountain rescue.