Family upset at delay in raising boat

THE family of a fisherman who drowned off the south-east coast have severely criticised the Government for the 21-month delay in raising the doomed boat which sank last year.

As the Maggie B was lifted to the surface yesterday morning, about a kilometre from Dunmore East harbour, a sister of skipper Glen Cott, 30, who died along with Jan Sankowski, 35, when the trawler sank in April of 2006, condemned the Government for its treatment of the families.

“I believed that the boat should have been raised at the time it happened,” said Sharon Cott. “They kept telling us there was no need to raise the boat and we kept telling them that there was.”

It wasn’t until a year later that the Government indicated that the Maggie B — and the Pere Charles which sank last January — would be raised from the seabed.

The tender for the complex operation was awarded to Irish Diving Contractors Ltd in August and preliminary work started at the beginning of October.

A crane barge brought from the Netherlands to carry out the actual raising job began its work on Sunday afternoon and, just after 8am yesterday, the Maggie B finally broke water.

“It’s very emotional,” said Ms Cott. “It’s traumatic and long overdue.”

She said that the authorities had put her through a lot and that the treatment of the families was “unfair” from the beginning. “That’s a lot of suffering and a lot of pain and a lot of hurt.”

A crew of about 30 people are involved in the salvage operation, which continued throughout yesterday with work to stabilise the Maggie B, pump out water, and refloat it alongside the crane barge. Ger Hegarty of the Irish Coast Guard said that a “cursory” examination did not indicate the presence of any bodies, but the trawler will be brought to Arklow by tug and raised alongside the harbour wall for full internal examination in the coming days.

Work will continue on the Pere Charles today, but the lifting process is expected to take about two days as it is a larger vessel and in more treacherous waters off the Hook Head coastline.

“I think, finally, we’re getting somewhere at last,” said Louise Doyle — fiancée of Pere Charles skipper Tom Hennessy — last night.