Council slammed for ignoring ‘damning’ beach safety report

Galway City Council has been accused of sitting on a five year-old “damning” safety audit which warned that lives will be lost in the water along Salthill Promenade.

Among the recommendations of the 2010 report was that the lifeguard station at Blackrock be immediately moved – because lifeguards were unable to see the water properly.

At a meeting of the local authority this week, Cllr Pearce Flannery said he had previously been told by Director of Services for the Environment and Recreation, Tom Connell, that the raft near Blackrock had been removed because of health and safety concerns.

The raft was last in use off Blackrock during the summer of 2013.

Councillors were told there were a “number of incidents” relating to the raft, that some people had nearly drowned, and there were instances of hypothermia.

Cllr Flannery subsequently demanded incident logs and any safety audits which led to the decision to remove the raft forever.

At this week’s meeting, Cllr Flannery again asked for the information, but was told by Mr Connell: “Apologies, I didn’t realise you were expecting details.”

The Director added that two reports are now being prepared – one by the Council’s own Health & Safety Officer and one by Irish Water Safety, which will be circulated to councilors with incident logs.

“You said three times the last night you would give me the incident logs. We want an entirely unedited version of the report. Word for word,” said Cllr Flannery.

He said that despite being told by Mr Connell that a safety audit did not already exist for Salthill beaches and Blackrock, he had since gotten one from Mr Connell’s department.

Cllr Flannery told the Galway City Tribune: “What is the delay. Could it be perhaps that there are no logs? This report – commissioned by the City Council and produced by Irish Water Safety – is now five years old. The majority of the serious issues contained within the report remain unaddressed.

“This report is damning. Five years ago, a safety report stated that accident statistics and activity logs were not made available to IWS at that time. And still we wait for the information.

“It is mindboggling that the Council could commission a report and get advice on how to prevent major accident and death and to do nothing. The enormity of this report is frightening,” said Cllr Flannery.

For more details on this story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune