Dear Editor,
I am a former member of the Irish Coast Guard Doolin unit with almost 8 years experience in the three main disciplines the unit provides, Land search, Boat search and rescue and cliff rescue.
I wish to express my thoughts and opinions surrounding the ongoing saga surrounding the search and recovery services provided in North Clare. I would like to clarify that all opinions given are my own and are based on publicly available information. They do not represent the Department of Transport/Irish Coast Guard, An Garda Síochána, the Department of Defence or any other group or organisation.
First of all I wish to give my full endorsement to the current Doolin Unit of the Irish Coast Guard. I have worked along these dedicated individuals in the past and I trust them to carry out their duties effectively but most importantly in the safest manner possible. Which leads nicely onto the core of this statement.
In my 8 years in the Coast Guard I’ve always felt safe. To give you a testament on how safe I felt within the Coast Guard I recently tried to paint a house and did not have the confidence to use a ladder but when I was a cliff climber I could easily climb and abseil at height. How can that be, you might ask? It simply comes down to trust. Trust in leadership, trust in your team mates, trust in your training and trust in your equipment. Climbing a ladder is one thing, but if you’ve no back up and fall you could be seriously injured. Abseiling off a far greater height when you’ve been provided world class equipment and training is quite another.
This extends to the Boat section as well. Well maintained first class equipment in terms of the boat, the PPE and the navigation equipment. But everything has its limits. No matter how well trained a person is armed with all the local knowledge and experience to enable them to carry out a tasking successfully the sea and weather would always have the final say in whether you could launch or not.
Making a safety based decision not to carry out a task is no reflection on the competency of a crew. Safety must always come first no matter how upsetting the circumstance is. I’m fully aware that is going to upset a lot of people but that’s the harsh reality. I was quite alarmed when I read the following statement in a recent article in relation to a recovery operation carried out by an inland dive team at the Cliffs of Moher: “Chairman of the club says the rescue was made increasingly difficult by large boulders and sea swells.”
Does this not directly contradict safety recommendations previously made? Which stated “Each Coast Guard station should take appropriate steps to ensure volunteers were aware of relevant exclusions for vessels and where possible display same clearly at the base station”. In my opinion it is completely unacceptable for independent units or ad hoc groups to circumvent the stringent safety standards that the Coast Guard units are held to.
I do not wish to undermine the valiant efforts of the dive club that day. Any effort to bring closure to a grieving family is honourable. But we have to remain objective. Search and Rescue carries risk and everyone involved must know those risks. There is always a Risk vs Reward balance that must be balanced every time a unit is tasked. Sometimes the risk of launching a recovery task to an area with dangerous or difficult access is not justified and so sometimes an agonising wait must be endured in order for weather to improve or for the right resources to arrive. This is done to keep volunteers safe, to ensure lessons have been learned and are being put into practice. If we don’t abide by this we risk sowing the seeds for another tragedy.
It is my understanding, at the time of writing, that any recovery operation that involves swimming/diving is to be carried out by either the Garda Water Unit or the Naval Service Diving Unit. They are trained full time professionals who are trained and experienced to carry out dynamic risk assessments in this line of work. It is their role to swim ashore and carry out the extrication if it is deemed safe. This has always been the case for as long as I can remember.
A recent Facebook post by the Naval Service explains that it takes fifteen weeks to become a qualified diver which takes place in the winter and the course has a pass rate of 25%. I don’t see how this capability can be matched by setting up a new unit from scratch, anywhere, in a matter of weeks. This is why I cannot in good conscience support any other group or organisation from carrying out this type of operation. You may think this is me getting political or not using common sense. But common sense will only get you so far. Specialist training and expertise is what’s needed and it’s needed more so at the base of the Cliffs of Moher.
There are many who will criticise the current arrangement and think they have solutions. But if I was to offer only one solution I would first explore where these specialised dive units are currently located within the country. I would then call on our elected officials to make enquiries as to having a unit deployed closer to North Clare. But I would go one step further and request that funding be made available to help provide the personnel and equipment and support for such a deployment. We have people who are highly trained to carry out this type of work. Why not locate them more strategically as needed?
One thing that has impressed me greatly is reading about collaborative efforts other units and agencies have brought to protracted searches. While flanking stations have assisted in the past, it is good to see support coming from further afield. In my day I gave a lot of time and effort to search for missing persons. This came at a cost to the family business. Despite this my family always supported what I did for the Coast Guard. So seeing that workload spread in terms of human resources and capabilities such as drones appears to make it more sustainable on an individual level especially with the cost of living crisis.
I am disappointed how the current Doolin Unit has been portrayed in parts of the media. These are people who give up their time at great financial and personal cost to serve their community. Is everyone just going to overlook that? There were times I thought of returning home to Ireland and reapplying to the unit but seeing hit piece after hit piece being written about the Doolin Unit I decided to stay away and just not get caught up in it. This was heartbreaking for me and it continues to do so to this day. Which begs the question how many others have been discouraged from joining?
I really didn’t want to write this. I really, really didn’t. Because at the heart of this are victims, their families and friends. We should be having a conversation as to why these tragedies are happening but instead I’ve been left with no other choice to discuss this matter. I wish I could have been more sensitive as no doubt families and friends are reading this so to them I can only apologise. But you must understand I have grave concerns with the idea of people taking matters into their own hands.
I can no longer stay silent on the matter. I will no longer stand by while my friends and former colleagues take the slings and arrows. This is why I wrote this letter.
As I said at the beginning of this article the Current unit of the Doolin Coast Guard have my full trust and support. I was proud to serve alongside them and I will continue to be proud of the service they provide to North Clare.
Patrick Mooney (Former member of the Irish Coast Guard, Doolin unit)
