Little has been learned from the State about how to deal effectively with marine wreck incidents since the Kowloon Bridge disaster over three decades ago and the Irish coast remains exposed to a potential marine disaster, a leading international maritime expert has warned.

Michael Kingston, a global expert in maritime law, said the fact that the wreck of the MV Alta ghostship remains stuck fast on the Cork coast almost two years since it ran aground, proves how inadequate the official State's response to such incidents is.

And for an island state, that is shameful, he said. “We must realise that our southwestern coastline, with the Fastnet Rock as its nexus, is one of the busiest T-junctions in the world with massive movement of ships, north, south, east and west from that point,” he said.

"And it is not as if we have not had several severe warnings already, and do not need the Ever Given, which ran aground in the Suez canal or the Wakashio, which ran aground off Mauritius, to inform us.

“The mess in Ballycotton, and our State’s failure to deal with it, demonstrates how we have learnt nothing from previous major incidents — again off Cork — the MV ‘Kowloon Bridge’ in 1986, and MV Betelgeuse’ 1979.

For much more, the Irish Examiner reports.

See, related story on the ship's first anniversary aground.