This article is from page 20 of the 2013-07-30 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 20 JPG
AFTER more than two decades of local campaigning and action, construction work on a new state-of-theart rescue centre for the Doolin Unit of the Irish Coast Guard will being later this week.
The new € 2 million centre, which is expected to be operational by the summer of 2014, will revolutionise the way in which the Doolin Unit can operate – and may, in time, save lives.
Even though the Doolin Unit of the Irish Coast Guard is one of the busiest coast guard units in the country, it does not currently have the ability to store all of its equipment at the current site at Doolin Pier.
This means that important equipment has to be stored at different locations around North Clare, meaning making rescue operations more complicated. The new facilities will include a garage area for the storage of boats, equipment and transport as well as changing facilities and an operations room.
“Ultimately this will make our work more efficient because we will be able to keep everything in the one place. The team will all have one place to assemble; there will be no confusion over where different teams should go in an emergency,” said Mattie Shannon of the Doolin Unit of the Irish Coastguard earlier this year. “Also, when you put a piece of equipment down you will where it is going to be when you need it again. That was a big problem. We had to store so much equipment in so many different places that it was very difficult to keep track of everything.
“This is going to make our job a lot more easy and they will make us better able to save leaves. We will be able to assemble at the one place and leave as a block.”
The news was welcomed yesterday by Clare Senator, Martin Conway (FG).
“The building in which the volunteers have worked in for the last 20 years was not fit for purpose and I have no doubt that the new facility will greatly assist the volunteers in their tireless work on behalf of the community, carrying out search, rescue and recovery operations off the coast of County Clare,” he said.