When this year is over and all done and we count our hundreds of dead, caused by needless accidents and unprovoked encounters with lethal danger, who will remember the name Michael Heffernan? Who will remember Michael's widow Anne-Marie, or his daughter Leigh-Anne, or his yet unborn child? When this year is over and all done, who will remember the name of the man who risked his life that others might live, and in risking it lost it?
Perhaps before this year is over and all done we will encounter a sacrifice as incredibly brave as Michael's, but I doubt it. He gave his life searching for four people missing in a seacave in Mayo last weekend, and I am unable to cope with the moral arithmetic involved when a young father sacrifices himself for strangers. And I am similarly unable to express an opinion about either the two adults who took their thirteen year old daughter to explore a sea-cave in a curragh with a rising tide in late October, and who survived, or the German gentleman who accompanied them (and who had already abandoned one expedition to the cave because it was so dangerous) and who like Michael did not survive.
A local man
Michael Heffernan is not the only hero in this terrible tale, but he is the only dead one. He did not belong to the "professional" rescue services, such as the Garda sub-aqua unit, the Irish Marine Rescue Service or Irish Lifeboats. He was a local man, a volunteer, who obeying a uniquely human instinct was prepared to risk his life for people who were not his own. Nor was he the only one of the Grainne Uaile Diving Club of Ballina who risked his life to save the family stranded in the cave. At least one other man did so, and only narrowly survived. I do not know his name. Other names have been deservedly mentioned - Gardai Sean O'Connell, Ciaran Doyle and Dave Mulhall, who eventually managed to get into the cave where the family had been marooned after their curragh was dashed against the rocks and its owner killed. The family then made it onto a shelf inside the cave and waited. Hours later, when their party had not returned, a local rescue operation involving Michael Heffernan and other members of the Grainne Uaile club got underway. What Michael did was of an order of bravery which defies the imagination. In high seas with a strong current running and in total dark he entered the cave in order to find and rescue the family, if they were alive - for he did not even know that they were; and in that pitch-black cave in appalling seas, he perished.
Mountainous seas
At that point the Garda Subaqua unit in Dublin was alerted and it flew to Mayo. Its members' first attempt to enter the cave through mountainous seas nearly ended in disaster. In total dark, their boat was disabled against the rocks inside the cave, and Garda Doyle - a very gallant gentleman indeed - swam out to the accompanying trawler, carrying a line to secure the garda inflatable inside the cave. The three gardai were then able to put the marooned family in the inflatable, which was hawled through 12foot waves to the waiting trawler.
Two other gardai - Garda Joe Finnegan and Garda Kieran Flynn - then went into the cave to collect the bodies of the two men who had drowned. The entire operation was masterminded from the trawler by Superintendent Tony McNamara, who is also cox of the Ballyglass lifeboat. The Garda Sioch& acute;ana come out of this story with exceptional honours. No award would be too great to honour their gallantry and their skill in such appalling conditions; and no award could be too great to honour the bravery of Michael Heffernan, who, being a local man, knew full well the risks he was taking.
State awards for bravery
He is gone, but his extraordinary bravery and his death serve to remind us of two particular deficiencies in our state. We really should have State awards for deeds of particular bravery - and I do not mean People of the Year Awards, but something that is clearly a State decoration for an occasion of valour, such as the Legion d'Honneur in France or the George Medal in Britain, yet higher still, on a direct par with our own Military Medal First Class, the British Victoria Cross or the US Medal of Honor. This would be a strictly apolitical award to be given by the President only.
And the second deficiency is the failure of the law to punish irresponsible behaviour. I do not know the circumstances of how this boat-trip began and I do not refer to it here; generally I know that the various rescue agencies of this country are repeatedly called out to save delinquents who have got into difficulties while fecklessly, stupidly, or frivolously climbing mountains, or taking to the sea when they clearly shouldn't.
In France, the rescued must pay a fine to cover the full cost of the rescue. And if the rescue costs the life of a rescuer, the rescued can face manslaughter charges. It is time we did the same here. We might not dissuade fools from being foolish; but we can at least make them a little poorer, or worse.
And as for the bravery award: President-elect Mrs McAleese need look no further for a name than the Heffernan Medal for Exceptional Gallantry, HMEG, to be worn with pride.