‘Three will drown over holiday’

ABOUT three people will die by drowning over the coming bank holiday weekend, the state’s water safety watchdog has warned.

Irish Water Safety (IWS) said lives could be saved if people took care to avoid the dangers of cold shock, hypothermia and excessive alcohol consumption.

Alcohol is a contributory factor in a third of all drowning tragedies.

IWS is also anxious to warn divers planning for their first open water dive over the weekend that the state’s only recompression chamber is closed.

The chamber at University Hospital Galway is being replaced and will be out of service during the entire diving season.

The safety authority is advising against diving at depths greater than 25 metres to reduce the risk of suffering the bends that require treatment in a recompression chamber.

Meanwhile, the Road Safety Authority (RSA) said there would be 42 families visiting graveyards at this time of year instead of celebrating.

Over the past five years, 42 people were killed and 104 seriously injured on Irish roads on St Patrick’s Day and over the Easter bank holiday weekend.

Last year, 11 people were killed and 34 seriously injured over the St Patrick’s Day and Easter bank holiday periods.

“Weekends are a high- risk time on our roads. With two bank holiday weekends back to back, risks are increased,” warned RSA chief executive Noel Brett.

“Make sensible decisions and don’t put your family and others through the grief of losing a loved one,” he advised.

Gardaí said “significant” extra resources would be deployed over the two bank holiday weekends in a bid to discourage speeding and drink driving.

There were 1,990 incidents of speeding detected by gardaí over the St Patrick’s Day holiday period last year and 481 incidents of drink driving.

Over the 2007 Easter holiday period there were 2,644 speeding incidents detected by gardaí and 445 incidents of drink driving.

Despite the unsettled weather forecast this weekend the organisers of the St Patrick’s Festival are hoping to get people out on the streets in Dublin to enjoy their programme of events and activities.

The festival culminates with the St Patrick’s Day parade that will snake through the capital with athletics legend Eamonn Coghlan as grand marshal.