Increased litigation, new health and safety regulations and the loss of a diver off the Mayo coast eight years ago are central to the tension over the search for bodies this week off Co Wexford. Lorna Siggins reports.
"Billy O'Connor's memory deserves better than this." The words of one close friend in relation to the continuing controversy over the search for two missing men off the Co Wexford coast.
Mr O'Connor, a highly experienced diver, engineer and father of two from New Ross, Co Wexford, went missing last Thursday evening after a dive to the Rising Sun wreck. His dive with another man, Harry Hannon, had not been sanctioned by the Irish Coast Guard, although it had lifted a one-mile exclusion zone around the wreck at the time.
The skipper of the Rising Sun, Pat Colfer (37), of Slade, Co Wexford, has been missing since the lobster boat sank on Tuesday of last week. Mr Colfer's crewmates, Jimmy Meyler (46) and Ian Tierney (29), were rescued some hours after the boat went down, but Mr Meyler died later in hospital.
When the wreck was located, the Irish Coast Guard advised against the dive by Mr O'Connor and Mr Hannon in 50 metres of water. It reimposed a one-mile exclusion zone around the wreck site, south of the Saltee Islands, last weekend. Many sports divers from sub-aqua clubs all over Ireland travelled to Kilmore Quay at the weekend to offer assistance in the search for Mr Colfer and Mr O'Connor only to find they were being told to keep away.
Comhairle Fo-Thuinn (CFT), the Irish Underwater Council, has defended Mr O'Connor's decision to dive, and pointed to his many years of experience on one of the most treacherous parts of the coastline. Mr O'Connor was a former vice-president of CFT and had trained many colleagues.
The Naval Service began diving operations at the wreck on Sunday. It said it required time to prepare its diving team and deploy substantial support equipment with the assistance of the Irish Lights ship Granuaile for a search at this depth.
It is one of its biggest diving operations since the sinking of the Betelgeuse off the west Cork coast, and involves the use of a recompression chamber, remotely operated vehicle and sidescan sonar. Ultimate control is with the Irish Coast Guard, it pointed out.
Greater emphasis on health and safety regulations and an increasingly litigious society are two of the reasons for the Irish Coast Guard's insistence on relying on State divers in such situations, although sports divers have proved to be invaluable in many recoveries, such as the search for five people who died when the Pisces angling boat capsized off Fethard-on-Sea, Co Wexford, just over three years ago.
Currently on transfer to the Department of Transport, the Irish Coast Guard has developed a very impressive rescue network which relies on memoranda of understanding with other partners. However, a Deloitte and Touche report commissioned to streamline the organisation has been allowed to gather dust in the department.
Several legal cases pending over the role of units in emergency situations have also forced it to take a seemingly rigid approach. At least one of the legal actions is understood to have involved the rescue of a deep-sea diver off the south coast. Declared units must be able to satisfy health and safety regulations, including training requirements.
A major influencing factor is also the tragic outcome of a search-and-rescue operation in north Mayo when four people were reported missing in a currach off Belderrig pier, near Ballycastle, Co Mayo, in October 1997.
Michael Heffernan, a member of the Granuaile diving club, lost his life while making a brave rescue attempt in the sea caves. Three of the four people were rescued by Garda divers, and it emerged that Mr Heffernan had been hurled against the rocks during his attempt.
His family received a posthumous gold medal conferred on him at the State's first marine rescue awards in 1999. He was the first civilian volunteer on record to die in a marine rescue.
Irish Coast Guard director Liam Kirwan and Cdr Eugene Ryan of the Naval Service spent over three hours with the families of Mr Colfer and Mr O'Connor on Monday in an effort to assuage concerns.
However, divers such as Seán Murray, former chairman of the Hook Sub-Aqua Club and a close friend of Mr O'Connor, believe the State should have acknowledged a week ago that it required the assistance of those qualified and with sufficient local knowledge to undertake the search of a wreck at such a depth, and in an area with strong sub-sea currents which have claimed many lives.