Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 6:

In page 40, line 6, to delete “stored;”.” and substitute the following:

“stored;

‘Irish Coast Guard’ means that part of the Department of Transport that is known by that name;”.”.

This is simply a technical amendment that provides a definition for various coastguards for drafting purposes. Amendment No. 7 seeks to strengthen the Irish aviation safety regulatory framework applied by the IAA concerning aviation activities of the Irish Coast Guard. These include search and rescue, medical transfer and firefighting. These are currently regulated at national level. This amendment will align the regulatory and oversight activities by the IAA with European aviation safety regulations.

Amendment No. 18 provides that the Minister for Transport may make regulations to exercise the option of Regulation No. 2018/1139 on common rules in the field of civil aviation to apply certain elements of the European regulations to coastguards and search and rescue aviation activities. Currently these activities are regulated by member states at a national level. It is done in this State by the IAA.

The main roles of the Irish Coast Guard, IRCG, are to rescue people from danger at sea or on land, to organise immediate medical transport or to assist boats and ships within the State's jurisdiction. The IRCG is responsible for a response to and co-ordination of maritime accidents which require search and rescue, counter-pollution and ship casualty operations. It also has responsibility for vessels traffic monitoring. The IRCG has contracts for five helicopters, which are provided at bases at Dublin, Waterford, Shannon and Sligo. The main IRCG activities aviation activities include search and rescue to people, the service of paramedical assistance to persons in remote or difficult access situations and the transfer of persons for urgent medical attention within the island of Ireland to and from the UK mainland.

Currently the European aviation safety regulations do not apply to aircraft and personnel in coast guard aviation activities. IRCG aviation activities are regulated at national level by the Irish Aviation Authority in the form of an air operator's certificate and the national search and rescue approval. The air operator's certificate allows an operator to perform specific operations of commercial air transport and the national search and rescue approval provides for remediation exemptions that are necessary to operate outside the requirements used to conduct commercial air transport without which some of the search and rescue operations would not be possible. In practice, the IAA already applies commercial air transport standards and procedures to the majority of IRCG aviation activities. These amendments formalise that and will serve to strengthen and clarify beyond doubt the regulation and the oversight by the IAA of aviation activities of the Irish Coast Guard.