Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I offer my deepest sympathies and condolences to the families of Paul, Mark, Dara and Ciarán. They were brave citizens of our country who lost their lives in our service. They protected and saved lives. What a noble calling. Today at our committee, we heard that in this year alone, 121 lives have been saved by the Irish Coast Guard. Some 391 people were saved last year. In quarter 3 of this year, 1,089 incidents were responded to. The Coast Guard undertook 315 missions. The legacy we, as legislators, create for the crew of R116 must be the implementation of the recommendations contained in the final report of the Air Accident Investigation Unit. That is our duty. It is what we must do. In keeping with that, there must be a non-partisan debate around the whole role of the Coast Guard.

I have had the pleasure of meeting with men and women who serve. From my information, the crews of our Irish Coast Guard helicopters are the only emergency service workers who work 24-hour shifts, starting at 1 p.m. and finishing at the same time the following day. These are aviation professionals who work for 24 hours at a time. Shifts can regularly be extended for up to 30 hours. Coast Guard helicopter crews typically work three consecutive 24-hour shift periods over six days. That is 72 hours on duty. The IAA allowed that to be reduced to 51 hours and 45 minutes through a combination of half-time and quarter factoring, arbitrarily applying the duty hours between 9 p.m. and 7.30 a.m. That has led to fatigue in our air crews. In reality, if duty hours were properly accounted for, the crews would be far in excess of the 2,000 hour EU working limit under the working time directive.

We have heard from many different stakeholder representatives about the whole issue of crews and the concerns of IALPA, the International Air Transport Association, IATA, and whoever else. They are concerned about the safety of their members. The key word that has come back is "fatigue". What is the regulator doing about that? We have spoken in the course of this debate about the mapping system and the failure to identify the island. None of us, on behalf of the staff and crews, mentioned the hours they spend awake. That has been captured in the recommendations in the report we are debating. Recommendation 41 states:

The IAA should review the Operator's 24-hour SAR shift pattern to ensure that it adequately accounts for concerns arising from published research on human performance; and that the Operator's FRMS [fatigue risk management system] and SAR variation to Aeronautical Notice O.58 provide appropriate levels of safety and protection for crews.

We should look at the working time directive. We can have a debate about the Air Corps and the whole Coast Guard service level agreement another time. Tonight and today, it is about the men and women of R116, but it is also about the Coast Guard service. The overarching theme I took from our committee meeting today was about the protection of others and the saving of lives. We were Members of this House when the news came of the tragic death of those four Irishmen and Irishwomen. Their legacy and that of the Minister of State must be to ensure, insofar as we can, that we will never have to return to this debate. Senator Horkan was right in his remarks. It is not about a cold, calculated computer printout. These are human lives that were lost in saving other human lives. That is our duty.

I believe the Minister of State has the capacity to lead. She has done so thus far. I believe she is a compassionate and caring person who will drive change. We will work with her in that respect. Tonight and today, our debate is framed by the lives that have been tragically lost and the families who are grieving. They want us to act and I believe we will.