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Displaying items by tag: Cruiseship career

A year ago the Government was warned in a secret report that the Irish Navy (Naval Service) was likely to be reduced to just three operational ships due to a fall in critical engineering staff, The Journal.ie has learned.

It has emerged that the navy has been reduced to just 840 personnel at the Cork Harbour base on Haulbowline island.

This will reduce further in the coming months as upwards of 40 people have indicated that they wish to resign.

A minimum strength for the Service is recommended to be 1,094 fully-trained personnel. The Navy has eight ships attached to its Cork Harbour base – two extra inshore vessels were recently purchased from New Zealand.

It currently has five ships available for operational patrols but repeated concerns have been expressed about the level of staffing.

According to a number of security sources a secret memo carried out by a body dubbed the Joint Operational Planning Group raised the issue.

It is understood that this report, compiled a year ago, warned that the staffing crisis in the Naval Service would result in a further reduction of ships capable of going to sea.

More here on the critical crewing crisis.

Published in Navy

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.