Mr. Eugene Clonan:

I thank Senator Dooley. The three questions were to provide a summary of the Doolin issue, outline the relationship with volunteers and how we maintain it and describe the state of the Irish Coast Guard, if I can put it that way.

On the question on Doolin, I will first say that we have 44 teams and, in general, every team is working fine. Our communications to the teams are managed by a coastal unit sector manager. I believe I was at this point when communications broke down earlier. The sector manager regularly visits the teams. We have an officers in charge, or OIC, conference once a year where all the OICs are brought together for a weekend. This is an in-house event where we get to know the volunteers. We also have sector meetings in the six sectors to see how things are going and we have a newsletter.

We have various means of communicating with the teams.