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The Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee has heard that the Irish Coast Guard’s rescue helicopter service costs the state around €60 million annually.

An initial 10-year contract with CHC Ireland to provide services with Sikorsky S-92 helicopters from four bases began in 2012 and was initially valued at €500 million.

As reported in The Irish Times yesterday, Thursday 28 May, Department of Transport secretary general Ken Spratt told the PAC that this cost will have risen to €650 million by 2022 but that it is “not a fixed-cost contract” and is “broadly in line with expectations at the outset”.

He also confirmed that one of three contract extensions has been exercised and CHC Ireland will continue to provide the coastguard SAR service until at least July 2023.

The Irish Times has more on the story HERE.

Published in Coastguard

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