Dozens of people honoured at Water Safety Awards for their parts in rescues

Cillian Ginty (16) was out on Banna Beach, near Tralee, Co Kerry, in early September, when the alarm was raised about a kitesurfer who was in difficulty in water.

To make matters worse, a woman who had gone into the water with a lifebuoy to help the kitesurfer also appeared to be getting into trouble.

Cillian, a strong swimmer, borrowed a surfboard and went into the sea to help, along with his father Damien Ginty.

“I went out to the man who was kitesurfing and my Dad went to the woman who was with the ring buoy, who was getting tired,” he says.

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The kitesurfer was “tangled in his lines” and fatigued, with the tide bringing him further and further from the shore, Damien says. Father and son were able to help both the kitesurfer and the woman back to shore safely.

Cillian, who had previously done a lifeguard course, says he knew what was “the right thing to do” in the situation.

If his son had not acted when did, “there would have been two people in trouble hundreds of metres offshore”, Damien says.

“He had the skills and the strong swimming ability to get out and knew what to do when he got out there,” his father says.

The pair were among 55 people honoured by Water Safety Ireland at an awards ceremony in Dublin Castle on Tuesday, for their roles in water rescues.

Another two recipients, Garda Ian Kelly and Garda Bryan Roche, from Pearse Street Garda station, were on patrol near Burgh Quay at 4am, when they were alerted to a woman in the river Liffey.

“We looked over the quay wall, and there was a woman unconscious in the river. So Bryan immediately radioed for help,” Ian says.

“I ran and got a lifebuoy, we threw it at her. She was obviously unconscious so she could not get it,” he says.

At that point Ian, who says he is a “confident” swimmer, went into the river to rescue the woman. “I pulled her towards the ladder, held her on the ladder and held her there until Dublin Fire Brigade came,” he says.

“I sea swim for a good while so I was confident enough I was able to pull her out. She’s safe, we’re safe, it’s just us doing our job really,” he says.

Ellen Glynn (20), who got lost at sea on a paddle board with her cousin Sara Feeney in 2020, received an award for work raising awareness about water safety.

In the high-profile incident, the two young women spent 15 hours at sea after being swept out from Furbo beach in Co Galway. They were found the next morning by a fishing boat off the Aran island of Inis Oírr.

Ellen, who was 17 at the time, says the incident made her “more aware of what’s going on” when she was in the water.

She says she wanted “to use what happened to me to bring attention to the importance of water safety”.

The young woman says she lost her enthusiasm for paddle boarding in the ocean after what had happened. “I was big on it before getting lost at sea but I haven’t been out much since,” she says.

Ellen O’Donoghue, a features journalist with The Irish Times, also received a media recognition award for coverage of water safety issues.