Mr. Eugene Clonan:

There is quite a lot in those questions but I will do my best to go at them. Regarding the Coast Guard maritime search and rescue function, we have the three rescue co-ordination centres and search and rescue units on the coast to respond. There is our search and rescue helicopters, the RNLI and, finally, our Coast Guard units, of which there are 44. There are three functions. Every team has a search function. They have vehicles, they break into teams, they have PPE and they search the coast. The next function a Coast Guard team could have is a boat. The Howth team, over on the other side of the harbour, has a boat. They are trained in that, equipped and so on. Another function a Coast Guard team has is a cliff team. Greystones has a cliff team, a boat and a search team. They are trained on that.

I will concentrate now on Dún Laoghaire. Dún Laoghaire has a small search team, an RNLI unit in the harbour and the helicopter behind it in Dublin Airport. Based on the risk assessment, that is the search unit for that area and it is very busy. With Covid, and looking at last year and this year so far, in the first quarter of this year we responded to about 435 incidents nationwide. During the month of August last year we responded to 430 incidents in just one month. We are expecting a huge ramping up of incidents this year. It is not the fishermen or the merchant ships; it is the people of Ireland availing of recreational facilities, particularly around Dún Laoghaire: the Forty Foot, Seapoint and the surrounding areas.

As for the number in each station, generally a search team has about 15 people. If you add boats and cliff teams, the number goes up to 25. As to how we recruit, every team has 15 members. It has a volunteer person in charge, a volunteer deputy, an education officer and a training officer. They are the main functions and they recruit locally.