Mr. Michael Kingston:

I thank the Chairman and all members of the committee for the opportunity to appear today. I thank the committee secretariat for its enormously hard organisational work and for affording me such courtesy and assistance amid the difficulties of the Covid-19 pandemic. I deeply commend the committee members on the earnest manner in which they are continuing the business of Ireland on behalf of Irish society. The fact that we are here today is symptomatic of that work and that desire to ensure that our citizens are afforded the opportunity to be heard in the development of important legislation. The committee has read my correspondence dated 4 January 2021 and, I hope, had a chance to look at some of the briefing note. I am accompanied today by barrister Ciaran McCarthy.

We come here with solutions in order to help the committee and indeed the Government, through the Department of Transport, to get this legislation right. The Department must take a step back and listen in order that collaboratively, we learn from the mistakes of the past and work together for a better future that will save lives in the maritime community - our merchant seafarers, pleasure craft users, fishers and emergency services - and protect the environment and save millions in wasted resources surrounding unnecessary tragedies. I wish to make it clear that, although at this stage I have quite a lot of experience working with multiple world governments, international organisations and the United Nations' International Maritime Organization, as I set out in my letter, I appear here today in my personal capacity.

I also come here with a very heavy burden on my shoulders, one that I did not ask to carry, but that has become my life's work, given the circumstances I evolved into, following my own father's tragic death in the Whiddy Island disaster in 1979. This led to many people contacting me to help them, people from all over Ireland, from all constituencies, who have lost beloved relatives or been involved in accidents, and who have not got to the bottom of what happened or were confused by the investigative process. They have heard me explain continually the importance of implementing maritime safety regulation correctly in Ireland, including the issue that is before us today. Mr. Ciaran McCarthy has echoed those sentiments.

I have also been contacted by a multitude of Department officials, Marine Casualty Investigation Board, MCIB, investigators, former MCIB investigators, and former Department surveyors, who have deep reservations about the current system and its shortcomings. The EU judgment of 9 May 2020 has affirmed what was being said. I pay tribute to their bravery in putting their trust in me, and I would like the committee to know that they, like me, appreciate its engagement and vest their faith in it, in our democracy. Until the committee acted, there had been a very serious democratic deficit in the manner in which the Department of Transport has pursued maritime casualty investigations. That includes the unwitting misleading of this very committee and the Oireachtas by successive well-intentioned Ministers and MCIB chairpersons, regarding the independence of the MCIB, now confirmed by the EU judgment and more recently the findings of that judgment in respect of impartiality.

This legislation must be fit for purpose, given the very serious consequences in the past of the Department's determination to ignore international best practice and, as we know, ultimately, ignore mandatory international law, first the United Nation's 2008 Casualty Investigation Code and then the 2009 EU directive, resulting in the EU judgment. The Department knew this to be wrong, and despite clear direction to rectify it by the then Minister, Noel Dempsey, in 2009, it was not brought to the attention of the incoming Minister in 2011, who unwittingly signed off on the incorrect transposition into Irish law of the EU directive in July 2011. How this happened is a very serious matter for the Oireachtas, given the consequences for Irish citizens, and not least the faith we as a society place in public officials and the standard of ethics expected of them.

The simple fact is that the MCIB was doomed from the start, because, despite the 1998 Report of the Investigation of Marine Casualties Policy Review Group, initiated by the then Minister, Seán Barrett, in 1996, which analysed international best practice and recommended that it was imperative that the MCIB be independent, it then went against its own findings in its conclusions to say that, "because we are a small country" we can ignore international best practice, and it accordingly advised that the chief surveyor and the Secretary General or her or his nominee should be on the board. We now know that international best practice has finally caught up with the Department through our membership of the European Union. The 1998 report also set out the required competence investigators should have in seafaring, engineering and naval architecture, and that of the MCIB chairperson in maritime experience, and it set out that investigators must have adequate resources, including technical and financial. That has not happened. So many other findings of the 1998 report have not been implemented and now is our chance to rectify this.

For reasons that I have explained in my briefing note to the committee, the proposed Act does not address these issues sufficiently and, in particular, among several other issues set out, we need an independent investigative unit headed by a full-time principal investigator, with full-time assistance from qualified maritime professionals, in line with the aviation and rail sectors, in an office independent from the Department of Transport, finally decoupling the investigator from the regulator and bringing us in line with international best practice.

I, with the advice of Mr. Ciaran McCarthy, am here to discuss all these issues and elaborate on further detail as per my briefing note, and any other issues the committee wishes to raise, to the best of our ability. We are all proud of Ireland and want to help our nation to get things right. Now is our chance, with the leadership of the Minister, Deputy Ryan, if he so wishes, for the maritime community, and for that we are indebted to the committee for this opportunity.