Merchant Shipping (Investigation of Marine Casualties) (Amendment) Bill 2021: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2022-02-23
============================================================

Mattie McGrath (IND), Tipperary

I have great respect for the Minister and know he is a decent man but this is a whitewash of the highest order. It is a half-baked and cobbled-together attempt by officials in the Department of Transport who have wanted to keep this situation under wraps ever since the Whiddy Island disaster. We have had many more, including one in Dungarvan when we lost two young men, young O'Brien and young Esmonde, 12 years ago, and there was no investigation. The investigation board has no seagoing experience. We have the Swedish and British models so why do we carry on with this appalling vista of ineptitude, cover-up and lack of proper legislation? I had great expectations of the Minister but obviously he is not in charge. The mandarins are deciding. Jobs for the boys were never better than they are now. It is shocking. That is nothing personal. We had an opportunity with this legislation-----

---

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/dail/2022-02-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:50:10+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-02-23