Taoiseach urged to make State apology over Whiddy Island disaster

Micheál Martin needs to make an 'appropriate, lengthy, honest, and heartfelt' apology over 1979 disaster off coast of Bantry, says maritime lawyer

Michael Kingston throwing flowers in the sea in memory of his father Tim on the 40th anniversary of the Betelgeuse disaster at the Whiddy Island pier in Bantry, Co Cork. File picture: Dan Linehan

A group representing the loved ones of the Whiddy Island disaster victims has called for the Taoiseach to make a State apology this week in the Dáil regarding the failings highlighted by the incident.

Speaking in the wake of the broadcast of Fire In The Sky, an RTÉ Radio documentary on the history of the disaster, Michael Kingston said the Taoiseach needs to make an “appropriate, lengthy, honest and heartfelt” apology to the families, workers and rescue services, and residents of Whiddy Island who were “forced into terrible danger unnecessarily” on the night of January 7, 1979.

He said that danger had resulted from “breaches of safety and the State failure to ensure safe operations”.

Mr Kingston, a maritime lawyer and vice president of the French Irish Relatives and Friends of the Betelgeuse group whose own father Tim died in the disaster, said the Taoiseach likewise needs to “urgently carry out a root and branch review of Ireland’s current failure to implement international maritime regulation."

The explosion aboard the MV Betelgeuse, a French oil tanker which was docked at the Whiddy Island tanker jetty at the time, eventually caused the deaths of all 51 people who had been either on the boat or on the jetty that night - a disaster Mr Kingston described as “shocking, absolutely reprehensible”.

Mr Kingston, who has dedicated his life since the disaster to the issue of safety at sea said that the deaths that night had been “unlawful” under the Irish law of the time and that the death certificates need to be rectified in order to underline the right to life provisions of the European Convention of Human Rights.

He cited other disasters in Europe, such as the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989 in Sheffield, England, which have since had the loss of life involved restated as being “unlawful death.”

“This fundamental right of the victims has been ignored here in Ireland, despite obvious regulatory wrongdoing directly causative of their death, and the Government has repeatedly failed to meet to discuss this,” Mr Kingston said.

Asked if he believes there is a reluctance to reform the system in place, he said it is a “multimillion-dollar question”, adding he believes there is a “cultural problem” within the administration of maritime safety which has “never been fixed.”

“I’ve moved heaven and earth to make sure we investigate maritime disaster correctly, and we’re simply not doing that,” he said.