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Displaying items by tag: Chefs

Chefs in the Naval Service are at a critically low level and so it has been unable to fill a growing number of vacancies, despite a two-year recruitment campaign aimed at attracting professionals from the private sector.

Currently, the navy has 16 fewer chefs than it requires and this will shortly increase to 18, as two more have signalled their intention to leave the service.

This is putting added pressure on those left to feed sailors and fears have been raised it will become even more difficult to fill these posts because of a countrywide shortage of chefs in the private sector.

Despite the two-year campaign for so-called ‘Direct Entry’ recruitment, the Naval Service has not been able to get one single chef to come into its ranks from the private sector.

Setting up 'field kitchens' can be tricky for soldiers, but the job can sometimes be far more difficult for navy chefs when ships are out on patrols and they have to cook for the crew in gale-force conditions.

Irish Examiner reports on the crew crisis. 

Published in Navy

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.