The long-promised 24-hour search-and-rescue helicopter service for the south-east coast will be in place next January, the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Mr Ahern, has said.
The Minister, who was speaking at the presentation of marine rescue awards in Dublin Castle yesterday, said helicopter crews had been recruited and were in training for the service. Currently, a day-time emergency helicopter is based at Waterford airport on contract to the Coast Guard, and 24-hour cover had been promised on successive occasions, with the most recent start-up date given as last July.
The International Transport Federation's Irish branch has been critical of the delay in replacing the 24-hour service, following the tragic loss of four Air Corps crew in the Dauphin helicopter crash of July 2nd,1999. The crash occurred on the first night-time mission from the upgraded base.
The Minister paid tribute to the bravery and sense of duty of the men and women attached to the emergency services, and the harrowing circumstances in which they worked. This "little-known group of people" thought of themselves as "anything but heroes", even when their jobs required that they did "extraordinary things", he said at the ceremony in Dublin Castle, the second such event since the marine rescue awards were introduced in 1999.
Two Coast Guard helicopter winchmen based at Shannon, Mr Noel Donnelly and Mr Peter Leonard, received the highest awards yesterday - the Michael Heffernan Silver Medal.
Mr Leonard was battered by wind and waves as he rescued 10 crew from an Irish-registered fishing vessel, the Celestial Dawn, in February of this year. The vessel had ran aground on rocks in Dingle harbour. Noel Donnelly showed considerable courage in the rescue of crewmen from the British-registered Spanish vessel, Milford Eagle, which went on fire 150 miles west of Shannon on January 31st, 2000.
The key awards are named after Michael Heffernan, the Mayo diver who lost his life trying to rescue four people from a sea cave off the Mayo coast in October, 1997. Mr Heffernan received a posthumous gold medal in 1999.
A crew member of the British RAF squadron at Kinloss, Scotland, Lieut Neil Eccleshall, was among the award winners, with awards also going to Coast Guard, Air Corps, Naval Service, RNLI, and inshore community rescue personnel and other individuals.
Among the many incidents recognised yesterday was the rescue of three crewmen from the French fishing vessel, An-Orient, off the Clare coast in October 2000, when eight fishermen, including one Irishman, died; the rescue of the sole survivor of the Spanish flagship, Arosa , off the north Galway coast in October, 2000, when 12 crewmen died; and the Irish Coast Guard rescue of 10 crew from a German-registered Spanish vessel, the Hansa, some 170 miles north-west of the Mayo coast.
