Joe McHugh (Fine Gael)

At 6.27 a.m. last Sunday morning, a crab boat with four crew members on board got into difficulties in Mulroy Bay in County Donegal. The coastguard units from Mulroy and Buncrana responded immediately to the boat's distress signal by heading for it to help the crew. By the time the Buncrana coastguard unit arrived at the scene of the incident, the crab boat was gone. The four crew men had luckily been saved by the Mulroy coastguard unit.

I have raised this case and given details of it because I am concerned that the area officer of the Mulroy coastguard unit was faced with a major moral dilemma on Sunday morning. He had to decide whether to try to save the four lives by launching a boat that was not commissioned by the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources. He was aware that to do so would not be well accepted by the Department. With the 20-20 vision of hindsight, we know all four crew members would have lost their lives if the area officer had not made the right decision, which was to launch the rescue boat. The crab boat had disappeared by the time the Buncrana unit arrived at the scene. Any sane person in a right mode of thinking will agree that four lives would have been lost if the area officer had not decided to launch the rescue boat. When the incident happened, the Mulroy unit had been waiting for six weeks to receive the training necessary to allow the rescue boat to be commissioned. I sent a fax to the Department last Wednesday to try to speed up the process.

I ask the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources to acknowledge the area officer's foresight and accuracy in deciding to launch the decommissioned rescue boat. It would have been a red letter day for the Department if he had not taken that decision, because four lives would have been lost. It is as simple as that. I ask the Minister of State to try to convince the Department that the official training of the Mulroy unit's crew members should be initiated immediately, as a matter of priority. There should be no more procrastination in this regard.