Mr. Bernard Lucas:

Yes, but my understanding is that mediation is a process and it may take time. We had Mr. Mulvey for one-and-a-half hours on a Tuesday night. That was the total time for our mediation. He told us that he would be back the following Tuesday night. He never came back. He said the weather was too bad or made some reference to the weather; there might have been a storm at the time. We never saw Mr. Mulvey again so our mediation process was for one-and-a-half hours. He spoke to the group of ten of us first, and the other six afterwards who also got one-and-a-half hours. No, I do not call that mediation. Mediation is a process that might take weeks or months. So, to answer the question, no I am not happy, nor are any of the ten of us. Essentially they were dismissed. You could not be happy with one-and-a-half hours of mediation. This is from a professional person who has done this all his life. He referred to things in the Mulvey report, as it is called, but he did not speak to any members individually. We were all in a room with a total stranger. People are a bit apprehensive about speaking about stuff and might speak more freely on a one-to-one basis. Instead of doing that he took reports from Graphite which they had done previously on one-to-one meetings with us. He used those as the basis of his one-to-one meetings. However, when we did those meetings with Graphite we were told that they were private and confidential. Yet he got access to them. We do not think that is right. We actually think it is very wrong because those meetings were carried out on the basis that they were private and confidential.

So we are not at all happy. He took a team and he split it in half. Six people resigned over problems with management, a typical thing like the Cliffs of Moher and different issues. Four of those people went back, two did not. Sorry I put the cart before the horse there. We were all sacked so they put together this internal team as they called it. Four of those people who were sacked, went back. They took back two members who had resigned two or three years previously. There were 12 of us and they asked two more to come back and that made up the eight people. Subsequently they asked a couple more of the ten to come back and they said no, they were not going back. They took eight people of whom four qualified; two had retired so some of their certificates had expired. They got rid of a group of ten people who could have continued the unit on all disciplines on the boat, searching and climbing, fully certified, and took on eight who cannot do climbing because there are not enough qualified people, and the boat is restricted. All they can do is search. Where is the logic behind that? I can see where they are coming from. If you read the report or any of the Facebook comments on the accident at the Cliffs of Moher yesterday, it said Rescue 115 attended along with Doolin Coast Guard. It looks great on paper. Doolin Coast Guard was there. Brilliant, but if you look into it deeply, there were three volunteers who could not go over a fence to help a person, that is the reality. They were there, definitely, but could they do anything? No. How does it make sense to take away ten people who could do all the tasks, and take on people who are very limited in what they can do? Essentially the unit is not functioning.