Mr. Diarmuid Ó Conghaile:

The report does say that. It is very clear to me that, as a matter of fact, we did exercise safety oversight at the time of the accident. There are one or two legitimate reasons for confusion. One is that we did not regulate the Irish Coast Guard per se. The Irish Coast Guard is separate from the operator that provides the search and rescue services. The Coast Guard has marine and aviation activities and sits in the Departments with responsibility for transport and the marine. It is not an aviation operator. Therefore, we did not have regulatory oversight of it at the time and do not now. As a consequence of the air accident investigation unit, AAIU, report, however, that has been clarified. The Bill will give us regulatory oversight of the Coast Guard. We are already in touch with the Coast Guard on developing a memorandum of understanding as to how we will fulfil that regulatory oversight, and we will issue regulations for the Coast Guard, in particular on its tasking of search and rescue, SAR, missions. I think that that was one reason for the confusion. Another was the fact, to which I have referred, that, as the Senator will be aware, the ICAO and IASA do not provide regulation material on SAR, which is unusual in civil aviation.