Cool head crucial for lifesaver Andrew

City Lives – Bernie Ní Fhlatharta meets dentist and lifeguard trainer Andrew Lally

Not since the short heat wave of 1995 have we seen as much activity on our beaches, making this summer one of the busiest in recent memory for lifeguards.

Thankfully, Galway beaches are some of the safest in the country but to date there have been 12 drownings elsewhere around the country.

Andrew Lally is one of four people who train lifeguards for the Irish Water Safety and so far this year, about 30 new people have gone through the programme. In total about 90 have been trained or recertified through the IWS programme in recent years.

There are 32 lifeguards employed on a rota basis by Galway County Council to man the main beaches in county and city. New international standards require two lifeguards working together and they now wear a distinctive red and yellow uniform, namely shorts and tee-shirts.

Andrew, who works as a dentist in his father, Conor’s practice in Steamship House at Galway Docks, says working as a lifeguard during the summer months on a Galway beach was still “one of the best jobs I ever had”.

In his role as a lifeguard trainer he can be seen putting would-be lifeguards through their paces on the Ladies Beach at Salthill on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.

“The Irish Water Safety trains the lifeguards for the Council and we continue to assess them through the summer. They have to be 17 to take part in the course but we lose many of them to the J1 visa trips to the US or to gap years as most of our panel are students.

“We currently have a teacher who is on placement so is available to us as a lifeguard this summer, but most of them are much younger, most of them students. Of course it would be great to get older, more experienced people, like teachers who are off for the summer and could do it,” he says, but not unkindly.

Andrew is not only proud of the IWS’s success to date with the training of lifeguards and their subsequent performance on beaches but also praises the co-operation of the public.

By that he means that the public in Galway generally tend to stick to the main beaches, which are safe and manned by lifeguards. These lifeguards might be young but they have been trained to be authorities, to know what to do in an emergency and to keep cool in a crisis.

Like those newly trained lifeguards, Andrew, who is now in his thirties, had to gain experience on the job – well on the beach to be exact – which makes him appreciate the commitment of the new lifeguards.

The training is quite tough and the tests or exams even tougher.

“Many good pool swimmers can be weaker in the open sea as they revert to the breast stroke or the doggie paddle or try to swim with their head above water. But obviously many of them get stronger and we now have a very good panel of trained lifeguards.”

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.