Tragic drowning of children - Importance of water safety

It would take a heart of granite not to be moved by the words of the mother of little Avery James Greene, from Cork, who died in a swimming pool in Spain last summer.

“I don’t get to kiss my child goodnight anymore. I just get to blow a kiss to a box of ashes.

"All I have are the memories,” Amanda Cambridge told Neil Prendeville on Cork’s Red FM radio station.

“I fell next to him and was just shaking his leg and rubbing his hand and telling him to wake up and to stop playing games,” she said, describing the tragic event that claimed the life of her child.

I never thought that we would end up with the outcome that we did.

The tragedy was made all the more poignant by the fact that Avery was due to begin swimming lessons after his family returned from holiday on the Costa Brava.

Less than a week later, another Cork toddler met a similar fate. Emmy Sophia Eckert was only five when she drowned in a lake in Germany.

These untimely deaths recall that of three-year-old Ronan Kennedy who drowned in a hotel jacuzzi in Youghal in 2015.

The deaths of those young children, whose lives had barely begun, has thrown into sharp focus the need for parents and guardians to give their youngest family members the ability to stay safe in the water.

Children of less than a year old can be taught the rudiments of swimming.

It is a skill that could save their lives.