Review urged on activity centres after incident

The Transport and Marine Minister has been urged to review all outdoor activity centres and draw up new safety standards following an investigation into a near-tragedy involving schoolchildren off the east coast last year.

The Marine Casualty Investigation Board made the recommendations in its report into an incident off Clogherhead in Co Louth on May 26, 2011, during which seven children from a primary school and their instructor were rescued after their kayaks capsized in heavy seas.

Tragedy was averted thanks to the swift actions of two alert RNLI crewmen working in a nearby lifeboat station at the time.

The incident occurred after 27 sixth class students and one teacher from St Brigid’s Girls NS in Glasnevin, Dublin, arrived at the Neptune Outdoor Centre in Clogherhead for a day of adventure sports.

Despite rough sea conditions, one instructor took a group of seven girls out on the water on RTM Mambo ‘sit-on-top’ kayaks at around 11.15am.

The board said although the instructor was experienced in water sports, he had no formal qualification, and no support or rescue boat was provided.

A gale warning and small craft warning issued by Met Éireann was either not known about or went unheeded.

The instructor had a VHF radio in a waterproof case but did not use it during the incident, and some of the flotation devices provided to the children didn’t fit properly, and weren’t checked.

As conditions worsened, all the kayaks capsized, the group fragmented, and some children were carried out to sea.

Clogherhead lifeboat operations manager Declan Lewis saw the group in difficulty and launched the lifeboat with station mechanic, Padraig Rath.

They rescued the instructor and five children, including two who had drifted almost 500m in minutes. A sixth pupil, who had drifted almost 1km, was rescued soon afterwards, and a seventh managed to make her own way to shore. There were no injuries.

In its report issued yesterday, the board said the weather and sea conditions were “not conducive” to a group of young children with no experience of kayaking, or water sports in general, being on the water.

It said the ratio of one instructor to seven pupils was insufficient in the prevailing conditions.

The board said the fact that some of the schoolgirls had carried out a project on water and sea safety helped them to take the correct course of action after they capsized.

It said if the instructor had used his radio, and if a support boat had been provided, help would have been provided sooner, and there may have been no need for the lifeboat to launch.

“Due to the lack of any official register, this centre and all others like it are effectively unregulated with no monitoring of staff or operations,” the board said.

It recommended that Leo Varadkar, the transport and marine minister, review the existing arrangements for activity centres involved in marine activities.

In particular, it recommended that standards for safety management systems, instructor qualifications, and equipment safety, are drawn up.

The Neptune Outdoor Centre has ceased trading since the incident.