Mr. Con Hayes:

The Lusitaniais vulnerable. People have compared it with theTitanic, which is in much better condition than the Lusitaniabecause it is in much deeper water that is not subject to the variations of weather in the Atlantic. The Lusitaniais in very shallow water and, therefore, artefacts can become covered over. The artefacts from the Spanish Armada were hard to find because they were under sand, which could happen in a very short time with the Lusitania. As the wreck collapses in on itself some artefacts could be lost because of that fact alone.

There is another factor that should not be dismissed too easily. It was technically very difficult to dive on the Lusitaniauntil relatively recently. Now there are hundreds of professional divers who would have no problem diving on the Lusitania. There is potential for artefacts to be stolen but I will not make that a big issue. The Lusitaniais vulnerable. There is a lot of focus on the Lusitaniabut nobody could protect it from that kind of stuff.

The window of opportunity to dive is in July, August and September, usually, and maybe June too if conditions are good. Access is very weather dependent and one usually only gets two or three days at a time. A lot of the time one has a ship commissioned that one cannot use but one must still pay for. This year the ship that the divers commissioned cost €15,000. They had a licence to dive eight days but only dived on six, which was very good. Unfortunately, two days were lost because the weather was not good enough. Divers need flexibility in terms of early licensing so that they can plan their timeframe and reach the site when the weather conditions are good. In the past there was a problem with licences being issued at the last second but it is less of a problem now.

There needs to be a more generous approach to the retrieval of artefacts. To be fair, there was a certain resistance to retrieving anything from the Lusitaniaat one stage. I am not sure what the rationale for that was but it does not make much sense to us. It seems to me we would have no problem retrieving artefacts from the Armadavessels. If somebody found them we would not say, "leave them there" but "bring them up" because they would be made of material that does not rust. A lot of the artefacts that we are interested in are made of brass and non-ferous materials so they will recover almost all of their original lustre when they are cleaned up. The formal process is a critical part of the licensing process whereby one must explain how one will recover and restore artefacts. All of that kind of stuff is covered.

The next ten years is crucial in terms of identifying and recovering artefacts. Hundreds of artefacts could be recovered from the ship. I do not know how many artefacts were identified this year but there is probably between 30 and 40 artefacts. Divers take photographs and identify the items. Members can see pictures on their screens of one or two items that divers have identified this year. One of the ship's bells is still buried in the sand. This year, a licence was issued for the ship's compass. I am not sure whether Mr. Eoin McGarry has dived at the site this year. I hope he has because the weather was so good. There is an issue with the timing and speed of granting a licence.

People need financial support. The divers do amazing work and fund themselves to dive on the Lusitaniaon our behalf. Again, we need a little bit of generosity from the State. Irish Lights owns a ship that is capable of recovering all of the artefacts in a very short time but it costs money.