Coast Guard control centres, which play a key role in emergency co-ordination, are facing cutbacks. Anne Lucey reports on concernsat Valentia station, in Co Kerry.
A planned review of manned Coast Guard control and radio centres will likely result in only one of two sub-centres which co-ordinate marine emergency responses being retained next year.
The likelihood is that one of two long-established stations - either Malin Head, in Co Donegal, or Valentia Island, off the Kerry coast, both of which have seen almost a century of service - will be axed. One would remain, along with the Marine Rescue Control Centre (MRCC) in Dublin.
The stations at Valentia and Malin Head are no longer just Coast Guard radio stations. Now called Marine Rescue Sub-Centres (MRSC), they also control centres for marine and inland water rescue, medical evacuation from vessels, as well as response centres for pollution at sea.
They look after cliff rescues, too, and there are recommendations that the responsibility for mountain rescue be transferred to the Coast Guard.
"With modern communications, it doesn't matter where the centre is," said Capt Jeoff Livingstone, the Irish Coast Guard's chief of operations.
In a report last October to the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, consultants Deloitte & Touche concluded that it would also be more cost-efficient to have two, not three, centres. The report is about to be considered by the Coast Guard partnership committee, made up of staff representatives, unions and management.
This is the second time the Coast Guard radio stations have come under threat. A previous study four years ago recommended that only one remain. But, "there has to be two, in case one goes down", Capt Livingstone explained.
From the station in Valentia, perched high on a cliff, it is possible to get a perspective not just on the dramatic coastline setting, but on history itself. Directly below to the left is the now unmanned lighthouse. Nearer again is the recently discovered tetrapod site, known locally as "the dinosaur", which has become a tourist attraction.
What used to be known as the Valentia Radio was part of a hub of activity on the island, together with the lighthouse, the Valentia Observatory (across the strait in Cahersiveen) and, most importantly, the Transatlantic Cable Station, shut down in 1963 after the railway stopped running to Cahersiveen. Valentia Radio came into being in 1912.
Valentia, it was discovered, had "fantastic radio coverage" and the station was moved bodily from Crookhaven, Co Cork, explained Mr Eugene Sullivan, divisional controller at Valentia MRSC. There were plans by the Knight of Kerry at the time to run the railway across the strait to the island.
The centre can be run from anywhere with modern satellite and digital communications. Some years ago, ships left Morse behind by turning to satellite systems. The Global Maritime Distress and Safety System is routed through satellites and two-way-radio.
The Morse machines in Valentia now rest in drawers outside the operations rooms. Transmitters remain in place, but these are soon to go, too.
Radio officers have become obsolete, except in the Mediterranean, Mr Sullivan said - a decision that may not be altogether wise. An attempt to re-instate them as technical officers is now being made on bigger ships.
"With our weather it is very important to have three stations," said Mr Sullivan. Morse may be gone but Valentia's original role as a 24-hour monitoring station using several radio frequencies is as important as ever. Valentia is also a 24-hour contact point for the ships that pass in its zone and beyond.
Valentia has 11 life boats under its control, the Sikorsky rescue helicopter in Shannon, and 23 of the State's 52 Coast Guard units. It oversees the largest and busiest area in the Republic, from Ballycotton right around to Galway, 200 miles west and 30 miles south. Contacts with non-Irish stations - in Spain and in Falmouth, for instance - are frequent.
Manned 24 hours, it is staffed by a team of 15 radio officers. All have what Mr Sullivan describes as "on-the-ground experience". They have all clocked in years listening to ships during their time at sea with the merchant navy and other organisations.
"It's all listening," Mr Ted Heaslip explained from his station in the operations room in Valentia. "There are some circumstances in which even I learned some new words," he said, of incidents when ships have the radios on but are unaware.
The "nearness" of the job sometimes strikes home. The helicopter called out by Valentia from Shannon may sometimes pass the window of the control centre, which looks out on the Republic's westernmost point in the Atlantic.
"Two hundred miles out, it's like a city out there at night, there are so many ships," the helicopter unit told them one night, said radio officer Mr Timothy Lyne.
Incident number 620 has just been notched up. As the officers swing into action, the computer-lined operations room is like a busy newsroom.
Mr Russell Orpen, senior mission co-ordinator, is helping to evacuate a 51-year-old Burmese national. The crew man, on board a commercial vessel 130 miles out, has developed a heart complaint.
Valentia co-ordinates medical evacuation (Medivac) by Shannon Rescue Marine helicopter to Tralee General Hospital.
There are several computers, including the RNLI system, which will replace the more straightforward pagers for the 23 rescue units.
There is a weather system that shows wave height, swells, misplaced buoys, and ships at sea.
Valentia is also the contact point for ship-to-shore telephone, and it deals with hundreds of calls from commercial traffic phoning home.
Mr Michael O'Connor, the caretaker on Valentia, said it would be a terrible loss to the island if the station were closed. It is so important for the whole island, and for south Kerry, he said.
It would be the greatest irony if Valentia, once the centre of communications for the Western world, was surpassed by a communications system so sophisticated that it needed no centre, Mr Sullivan agreed.
"Local knowledge can be transferred. But ships' captains and ships get to know you - and to trust you are where you have always been.
"You build up relationships with ships and learn to deal with panic and trauma taking place out there on the sea."