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Press Release 

Spanish Ambassador Observes Debate on Valentia -
Mark Daly Warns Lives Will Be Lost if Valentia and Malin Close

(27th Feb 5pm) The Spanish Ambassador, Dr. José de Carvajal, today attended a sitting of the Seanad where the future of the Marine Rescue Centres in Valentia and Malin was debated. As Valentia is the only Centre in Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and France with staff who can communicate with Spanish vessels in distress. Senator Mark Daly warned that lives will be lost as a direct result of the loss of this experience. Unbelievably the Valentia Centre may closed as a direct result of a 16 page, highly disreputed report while a 145 page study conducted by Deloitte and Touche in 2002 recommended Valentia remain open.

Senator Daly set out a powerful argument questioning the information supplied by senior management of the Irish Coast Guards to the report on which proposes the closure of Valentia. Daly countered that “There is an agenda at Senior Management Level in the Irish Coast Guard Service at the heart of this report that threatens the future of Valentia and Malin as a Marine Resource Centre”. Senator Daly branded those “who supplied false and misleading information are not public servants but self serving public officials”.

Senator Daly stressed the loss of skills and experience that would occur if Valentia was closed. In 2007, out of 258 May Day calls 41 and 52 broadcasts were dealt with by Malin and Dublin respectively while a majority of 165 urgency broadcasts were dealt with by Valentia. Senator Daly cautioned that when rationalisation in the UK Coast Guards led to redundancies and downsizes, deaths in the period 1998-2002 increased by 28.1%. This was attributed to inexperience of the staff. Senator Daly reasoned that this statistic coupled with the loss of Spanish speaking staff made the risk to life, especially in Spanish vessels in distress, incalculable.

Speaking in the Seanad the Senator listed the lies in the report, incredibly Daly catalogued five serious misrepresentations of the truth in a 16 page document. They were as follows:

1. The report states that “At present about half the staff do not live in either Home MRSC County”. In fact, Senator Daly informed, of the 14 staff, 11 live in Co. Kerry.
2. Daly listed the quote “New staff require access to schools, shopping and leisure facilities and employments for partners”. In truth, of the 11 spouses living in Kerry 10 are in employment. What is more, the local school, Coláiste Na Sceilige boasts 80% of their Leaving Cert students going on to third level education.
3. The management of the Irish Coast Guards reported that the electricity supply in Valentia is not up to scratch. This is disputed in a letter of the 7th October 2007 by Tadgh O’Donoghue, Former Head of ESB “Outages on the island should be no more or less than in any other part of the country”. The assertion that “there is an inadequacy of the electricity supply networks” is also refuted by
4. With regards to communications, Daly pointed out that FEXCO, an international company with 100 employees with view to expansion, depend on first class communication services, set up in Cahirciveen. Surely this is a high enough standard.
5. The fifth falsehood in the report “Locating the centres at either Valentia or Malin would require major construction work”. However when the Dublin Marine Rescue Centre previously came to Valentia due to restructuring there was no issue with space or resources, both the East and West Coasts were served by Valentia.

Senator Daly identified that by the admission of the report itself it states that, “With modern equipment it would be possible to run the Marine Rescue Coordination centre from one location in the country”. In this case, Daly contends that there is an agenda from high up in the Irish Coast Guards to close Valentia and an indifference to the danger this decision will cause.

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