Eircom is investigating why one of its emergency service operators had difficulty contacting Valentia Coast Guard station after a 999 call was made.
A spokeswoman said yesterday an operator tried for more than 11/2 minutes to connect to the marine co-ordination centre at Valentia after being alerted to a water-based emergency at Kilkee, Co Clare, on April 14th. Three divers had got into difficulty, and a local man, who was attempting to help one of them, was drowned.
Concerns have been expressed locally about the length of the response time after emergency phone calls were made.
A member of Kilkee Marine Rescue has called for an inquiry into how a delay occurred before the service was alerted.
According to Eircom, three 999 calls were made. The first, at 18:02:29, broke down after 19 seconds.
When a second call from the same mobile was made at 18:03:41, more than 3 1/2 minutes elapsed before the operator got the call through to Valentia Coast Guard.
In the interim the caller, Mr Declan McCarthy, was connected to Dublin Coast Guard Command Centre which requested, after 27 seconds, that the operator connect the call to Valentia.
"The 999 Emergency Service Operator connected the call to the Valentia Coast Guard Command Centre at 18:07:23," Eircom said. This was three minutes, 42 seconds after the operator first received the call.
Mr Manuel di Lucia, a founder member and former chairman of the 20-year-old Kilkee voluntary rescue service, said the rescue vessel was already on the way when members were paged about the incident.
They rescued one of the divers and retrieved the body of Mr Seamus Byrne. The other two divers made it to the shore safely.
"We have concerns with regard to the format for call-outs. It is going back a good few years, but this one brought it to a head," Mr di Lucia said.
Mr McCarthy, from Limerick, had been walking in Kilkee with his wife and children. After getting through to Valentia, and explaining what was happening, he believes he was transferred to a Dublin-based garda. He then got through to garda∅ at Kilrush, eight miles from the emergency.
He subsequently found out that his was one of three calls received by Kilrush, all of which were logged in at 6.05 p.m.
The owner of the phone, who does not wish to be named, got into a car and drove around Kilkee Bay to alert the inshore marine rescue service.
"I would say that if they had been there four minutes earlier, they would have saved him," Mr McCarthy said.
Ms Diana Martin, who lives close to where Mr Byrne got into difficulty, said she ended a 999 call in exasperation after a garda put her on hold three times. "He did not ask me the right questions," she said.
She, too, drove round the bay to alert the staff of the rescue centre but found the other person had reached there seconds before her.