AN INVESTIGATION into the sinking of an Irish-registered Spanish fishing vessel two years ago has found that a number of national regulations were broken in relation to safety.
Three men died when the Dinishsank about 270km southwest of the Scilly Isles in May 2006. Had the regulations been observed "the outcome . . . might have been very different", the Marine Casualty Investigation Board says.
The bodies of two of the three who died were never found. They were Spanish chief engineer Manuel Grana Verdeal and Djua Amadu, a deckhand from Guinea-Bissau. A third crewman, Felix Osei, held a Spanish certificate of competency. He was taken from the water but did not survive.
A Royal Navy helicopter from Culdrose and an RAF helicopter from Devon were scrambled when the 43-year-old, Spanish-built vessel issued an alert on May 24th, 2006, and the crew of a nearby oil freighter, the Stena Contest, spotted two life-rafts in the water.
The Stena Contestrescued six crew from one of the life-rafts, but the second was empty.
The Irish-flagged 25-metre stern trawler had been bought three months before its sinking by Castletown Fisheries Ltd. That company, with registered offices in Dublin, is wholly owned by the Spanish company, Pesca Baqueiro. The board's report found that no application for a survey was made after the vessel underwent extensive repairs in April and May 2006. "Repairs of this nature are usually required to be surveyed by the flag State and classification society in order to maintain the validity of statutory certificates and classification certificates," it says.
Towards the middle of May, the vessel loaded up for a three-month fishing campaign off southwest Ireland. None of the largely Spanish crew had Bord Iascaigh Mhara basic safety training as required by regulations.
None of the officers' certificates of competency would have been valid for service on an Irish vessel, the report notes.
The alert was raised when the engine room flooded, and the master's failure to ensure that emergency drills were carried out before sailing meant that the evacuation was chaotic.
The report says that the State should review the effectiveness of enforcement of marine safety legislation, and of its marine safety information promulgation.
It says that the State should review its policy of accepting classification certificates as evidence of compliance. The State should also review safety legislation applying to fishing vessels greater than 24 metres with a view to "more prescriptive requirements".
The vessel owners, Castletown Fisheries, contested some of the findings, but the board said that the information supplied "did not alter the conclusion of the report".
