Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)

I welcome the opportunity to speak. I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward the motion. This is a really important topic. The Coast Guard has been shouting into the wind for far too long. It is only right that we have the opportunity today to put this issue front and centre.

I am sincerely grateful to all the coastal communities across Mayo. I thank all the voluntary groups, including the Coast Guard, the CHC crews, the RNLI, the Civil Defence, Mountain Rescue, the many community first responders and so many other voluntary groups right across Mayo. They answer the call on the darkest of nights when everyone else is told to stay at home and batten down the hatches. The Coast Guard and many other voluntary groups set about their journeys and start into search and rescue missions. It is only right that we give them the respect they deserve.

Let us be extremely straight with people. If you are on a 24-hour search and rescue shift, it is a 24-hour shift. You are at your base, alert and deployable. That is the reality. These people are so courageous in going out in the worst of conditions. They are at their base, alert, ready to go and deployable within seconds. That is the expectation and it is important for the Minister of State to recognise that. Unfortunately, that it is not recognised and we are understanding those 24 hours as 16.5 hours. That is not a technicality. It is disrespectful and dangerous. It is hard to believe that a contract worth €800 million, which has been decades in planning, has produced such a failure. It is a failure in the most basic arithmetic and planning.

In Mayo, we sadly remember Rescue 116. After all of the promises that lessons would be learned and so on, and the recognition of the great work that went on, it is hard to believe, so many years later, that lessons have not been learned. We have not addressed the issues.

The word salad of assurances is utter nonsense. I listened to the contribution from the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon. He outlined that the Minister for Transport has no responsibility for this issue or for these contracts. He stated that the matter is outside the remit of the Minister and is instead the responsibility of a particular agency, namely the Irish Aviation Authority. To whom does the Irish Aviation Authority report? Who has responsibility for the agency? It is a semi-State agency that has a regulatory aspect for which the Minister is responsible. It is incredible that we have a situation, time and again, whereby Ministers stand up and say in the Dáil that something is not their responsibility when it clearly is.

It is important that the spin ends, that we reward the courageous work that is happening and that we provide fairness by recognising those who work 24-hour shifts.

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