Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On 14 March 2017, Dara Fitzpatrick, Mark Duffy, Ciarán Smith and Paul Ormsby went to work and never came home. While we are here talking about reports and 71 recommendations, which I will get to in a second, the families of those four people, who did nothing every single day of their working lives but try to keep us safe, are dealing with grief beyond imagination. They are the people who have to go to funerals and we are the people who have to browse reports and recommendations. Some of those families, as the House is well aware, do not even have graves to go to, yet today we will mince words about what we have and have not done, who was and was not responsible before 2017 and how great we are because of what we have done since. The recommendations, however, point to multiple major flaws in probably every aspect facing the search team that night. What is really difficult for the families is subsequently knowing there was not even a need for Rescue 116 to leave Dublin that night and head to Blackrock.

We knew from the interim reports what some of the 71 recommendations would be. We have a responsibility to the legacy of those people who lost their lives that day. We are all well aware, because of the mapping situation, that the four lives that were lost are not the only lives that were lost in these tragic circumstances because of the OSI maps. I have to read out some of the most incredible recommendations from the report. Regarding the aeronautical charts, "Euronav imagery did not extend as far as Black Rock". The report states that the OSI imagery available on the Toughbook did not show Blackrock lighthouse or any of the terrain surrounding it at all in the open water vicinity of where the crew were flying. Blackrock was not identified on their radar. Blackrock was not even in the EGPWS database. The Minister of State said the State's response is to make sure we have appropriate maps for the pilots and winch crews who go up every single day as part of our search and rescue teams and all aviation operators in this country. They do not want appropriate maps; they would love accurate maps. That would be a very good start. Given the trauma the staff who work in the OSI have suffered in recent years, it is an absolute disgrace that the IAA is not taking responsibility for its part in respect of the maps.

Oversight will centre my thoughts and my views on the IAA, the Coast Guard and, unfortunately, the Department. I take no pleasure in any of this, and most of it happened long before the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, ever even arrived in the Department.

The then Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport and the IRCG stated that neither of them had aviation expertise or search and rescue expertise, yet they are the Department and the regulator responsible for making sure that the activities of all our pilots are safe and monitored. I cannot think of anything more damning than to be told that the people who are responsible for making sure that our pilots are safe do not, did not then and still do not now have expertise in search and rescue and aviation regulation. As early as about a month ago, the Minister of State's colleague, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, received a letter asking for a working group to be established between the IAA, which said it did not even know it had responsibility for search and rescue when Rescue 116 crashed with the tragic loss of lives. As recently as a number of weeks ago, however, it was asked to set up a working group in order that it could share the information, or lack of expertise, between the sea, the Coast Guards, the operators - and whoever that will be after the next tender is irrelevant to me - and the Department of Transport. The Minister has not even acknowledged the letter, let alone taken seriously the deficit that still exists arising from the recommendations of the report issued last week.

Senator Craughwell is right that we have a real opportunity to respond to the legacy of the lives of the four people who lost their lives in March 2017 by looking at the aviation Bill currently going through the House. For the past 18 years, while the IAA has been in operation, we have had what I can only suggest to the Minister of State is light-touch regulation. The legislation in front of us will continue to do exactly the same on the basis that the regulator wants to be able to do what it needs to do to mend a relationship that has been fundamentally broken between the pilots in this country and the people recommending regulations for those pilots. Our pilots are crying out for more regulation, more transparency and more co-operation, and the Department and the IAA are saying, "No, thanks. We do not need that." If there is a lesson we need to learn from this fundamentally important report, while the families of these people are still grieving, it is that we can show them that we have taken the recommendations seriously by changing the legislation in the coming weeks and reinforcing in primary legislation the responsibilities, the transparency and the directions of the Department, which does not have the expertise to govern and regulate aviation. It needs the people who are supposed to have the expertise and the oversight for regulation, which is the IAA, to give it very clear directions in primary legislation to establish peer support groups and biannual forum reviews in order that we can share information, learn and make sure that mistakes never happen again and that there is transparency and audits. Our aviation companies are now regulated by this new regulator from a safety perspective. We must ensure that we have sharing and an even playing field in how they are audited, how crew fatigue is managed and how mental health issues are co-ordinated and addressed.

I am sorry. I have gone well over my time but I feel incredibly passionate about this. We have thousands of pilots and air crew who go up and take their lives in their hands to make sure we are safe when we go travelling on business or for holidays or pleasure. We cannot as a State even assure and give them the transparency they are crying out for in the regulation of their safety and, ultimately, ours.