Coast Guard Service Seanad Éireann — 2023-12-13 ============================================================ Regina Doherty (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach There is something really worrying in the Minister of State's response. He is telling me that the CHC contractor must fully co-operate with the Minister in the transfer arrangements. Is he telling me that the Minister stands over the fact that 80% of the staff of one of our bases will be gone from January before that base becomes fully operational in October 2024, therefore, putting people's lives at risk? Are these the instructions and direction of the Minister and the Department who the Minister of State says are standing over this transition? Andy Evans from Aerossurance is the man who evaluated the tender. I want to know if he scored Bristow Ireland's transition plan with higher points than he scored CHC's transition plan. I want to know what the IAA thinks about having 80% of the staff of one of our bases going to a company that will not be providing a service, leaving the people who are currently providing the service null and void. I want to know why the successful bidder that has to look after our service for the next ten years is not concerned about putting people's lives at risk for ten months. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2023-12-13/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:31+00:00 Sitting date: 2023-12-13