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Displaying items by tag: Ronan Kennedy

Water Safety Ireland is seeking the views of the public on a draft regulatory framework for aquatic leisure facilities in Ireland.

Following the inquest on 29 March 2017 into the tragic fatal drowning of Ronan Kennedy at the Red Barn Quality Hotel in Youghal on 14 July 2015, the Dublin Coroner made two crucial recommendations to former Minister for Housing, Planning, Community & Local Government, Simon Coveney:

  • That there should be a dedicated lifeguard on duty at all times at swimming pools and that the lifeguard should not be a person engaged in other supervisory duties; and
  • To recommend to the relevant minister that a dedicated water safety inspectorate is required to formulate regulations and ensure their implementation.

Minister Coveney tasked Water Safety Ireland to review best practice in other European countries with a view to informing the development of an appropriate regulatory framework for Ireland.

Water Safety Ireland says it believes this can be a legacy that will turn this tragic drowning in to a positive regulatory framework that will help prevent similar tragedies in the future, to be known as ‘Ronan’s Regulations’.

Details of the public consultation are available on the Water Safety Ireland website HERE.

Published in Water Safety

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.