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Displaying items by tag: Merchant Shipping (Passenger Ship) Rules 2020

The latest Marine Notice from the Department of Transport draws attention to the Merchant Shipping (Passenger Ship) Rules 2020 which were made law by Statutory Instrument on 15 December.

This new legislation provides a national regulatory regime for passenger ships of less than 24 metres in length and constructed of steel or aluminium on or after 1 July 1998 and engaged on domestic voyages.

Exempted from these rules are high-speed passenger craft, to which the European Union (Passenger Ships) Regulations 2019 (SI No 676 of 2019) apply.

The rules maintain an appropriate safety regime for such passenger ships following changes that took effect in 2019 in associated European Union legislation. They include safety standards and requirements in relation to ship construction, fire protection, life-saving appliances and radio communications.

A full briefing on the new rules is included in Marine Notice No 02 of 2021, a PDF of which is available to download below.

Published in Ferry

William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago