Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Gaffney and his delegation are very welcome. I have seen many presentations at Oireachtas committees over the past ten years. I have never seen so much misery in four pages. I cannot begin to understand how Mr. Gaffney must feel. I lost a business 30- or 40-odd years ago, but I was able to turn the page and move on. There is no page to turn here. What he is coping with is horrendous.

I could ask Mr. Gaffney lots of questions about why this was not picked up when he sailed her from Germany back to Ireland. I could ask lots of questions like that, but I do not propose to do that.

A previous Minister said that if we opened the door to this, we would open the floodgates. That is never an excuse not to do the right thing at the right time. I want to propose this to the committee. It is my view that we should ask the Irish State to deal with Mr. Gaffney first and deal with Europe second. He cannot continue to fight City Hall. It was a phenomenal achievement for a guy who started at 15 and finished up as the skipper of a ship that cost millions of euro. He deserves the backing of this committee and the backing of the country because we need people like him. I am asking the committee to make a recommendation to the Department of Transport to compensate this man. The Irish State should take up the safety issues.

This brings me on to the two ship architects who are here. Based on what Mr. Delaney said, the company manufactured the first of the 11 vessels, did the stability tests on it, created a stability book and that was it. It just replicated that across the board but never really carried out proper safety tests on them. I ask Mr. Delaney to give a marine architect's point of view. Is it possible, for example, to have a stability certificate for the Mediterranean which would not necessarily apply to the Irish Sea? The Irish Sea can be a pretty horrible place. I sailed across it many times as a young man. When there is bad weather on the Irish Sea it can be really bad weather. It and the Bay of Biscay are probably the two worst. Is it possible that those ships are perfectly serviceable in one geographic location and totally unsuitable in another?