News
Launch of ‘drowning watch’ scheme coincides with start of college year
Volunteers from the new Galway Waterways Patrol are aiming to hold their first patrol on the weekend that students return to the city.
GWP was officially launched last week at the Radisson Blu Hotel, where a number of enthusiastic volunteers listened to an outline of proposals and information on the training that will be delivered before the first patrol.
“We are very, very unique in Galway. We have nearly 200 miles of waterways in Galway City. That’s a huge amount of water,” said GWP founder Arthur Carr to those who attended the launch.
“They have one river flowing through or they have the docks in any of the other cities where these waterway patrols are being carried out.
“And, for instance, in one river in Limerick, in three years, they have saved or prevented 300 accidents. That is just one. Cork is bigger than that because they’ve been at it a little bit longer. Wexford is huge. They haven’t been at it that long.
“We have huge amounts of waterways to patrol and we need your help,” he said.
Galway Mayor Frank Fahy – who is also a taxi driver – said he regularly comes across people in distress.
“Galway Waterways Patrol is something that should have been done years ago, and in my other life as a taxi driver, I regularly come across people who are in distress, or attempting to go in the river or in the canals.
“In a lot of cases, your first responder when you see people going into the water would be the Gardaí or the Fire Brigade, and I have to say in my 25 years of experience as a taxi driver I’ve seen quite a few people going in the river.”
In many cases, he said, there are young people who don’t get into the nightclubs with their friends and end up wandering around the city on their own. According to the mayor, some of these young people accidentally end up in the water.
“It isn’t deliberate. It’s not suicide. They’re either out of it on drink or drugs or a mixture of both. We have a lot of waterways in the city that are very open, and it’s very easy to get lost and we need to do something.”
GWP are looking at having patrols at “prime risk times”, which are between 11pm and 4am – times when many young people will be out in the city.
“When you’ve a group of five or six young people and one is turned away from the nightclub, he’s on his own. It’s not acceptable in my book that nightclubs should have that policy. And if they do turn somebody away, they should have a very valid reason for why they do it,” said Cllr Fahy.
GWP are planning to provide free training to all volunteers before they go on patrol and this training will be provided by the Red Cross and Civil Defence. The role of the volunteers will be to observe and report any incidents to the emergency services, which will be on the scene, typically, within two minutes.
Volunteers will be in orange, high-vis jackets while on patrol, so that the emergency services can spot them easily. The jackets are orange so that they don’t clash with the guards or the fire services. Emergency services will recognise the colour immediately and know exactly where the emergency is.
So far, similar patrols have saved many lives, and prevented accidents all over the country and with the high number of drownings in Galway over the years, GWP is exactly what the city needs.
“Last year the lifeguards that we trained and assessed around the country plucked 831 people from actually drowning. They plucked them out of the water, about to drown,” said Deputy CEO of Irish Water Safety, Roger Sweeney, at the launch.
“400 lost children were found, lost and wandering by themselves, alone beside water, and reunited by lifeguards with their parents.
“But the 831 that nearly drowned could have been a bigger problem. One of the issues can be double drownings and that’s where somebody actually goes in to try and rescue somebody else.”
Last year, there were 114 drownings in Ireland, 12 of which were in Galway. That’s one more drowning incident than the 11 that took place in Galway the previous year. On average, according to Mr Sweeney, there are 135 drownings in Ireland every year.
“So it’s a particular problem. We had twice as many young children aged under 14 drown last year: six. Usually three drown every year. We had the same number of teenagers drowning. Six of them drowned last year – half of them suicides and half of them accidental.
“Alcohol is a big problem and if you look at the statistics overall, in one third of all drownings in Ireland, the casualty has consumed alcohol,” said Mr Sweeney.
For more information, or to become a volunteer, email galwaywaterwayspatrol @gmail.com
Significant state investment is required to address ‘shocking’ inequalities that leave cancer patients in the West at greater risk of succumbing to the disease.
A meeting of Regional Health Forum West heard that survival rates for breast, lung and colorectal cancers than the national average, and with the most deprived quintile of the population, the West’s residents faced poorer outcomes from a cancer diagnosis.
For breast cancer patients, the five-year survival rate was 80% in the West versus 85% nationally; for lung cancer patients it was 16.7% in the west against a 19.5% national survival rate; and in the West’s colorectal cancer patients, there was a 62.6% survival rate where the national average was 63.1%.
These startling statistics were provided in answer to a question from Ballinasloe-based Cllr Evelyn Parsons (Ind) who said it was yet another reminder that cancer treatment infrastructure in the West was in dire need of improvement.
“The situation is pretty stark. In the Western Regional Health Forum area, we have the highest incidence of deprivation and the highest health inequalities because of that – we have the highest incidences of cancer nationally because of that,” said Cllr Parsons, who is also a general practitioner.
In details provided by CEO of Saolta Health Care Group, which operates Galway’s hospitals, it was stated that a number of factors were impacting on patient outcomes.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
On the eve of completing his 150th marathon, an odyssey that has taken him across 53 countries, Loughrea’s Marathon Man has announced that he is planning to hang up his running shoes.
But not before Jarlath Fitzgerald completes another ten races, making it 160 marathons on the occasion of his 60th birthday.
“I want to draw the line in 2026. I turn 57 in October and when I reach 60 it’s the finishing line. The longer races are taking it out of me. I did 20 miles there two weeks ago and didn’t feel good. It’s getting harder,” he reveals.
“I’ve arthritis in both hips and there’s wear and tear in the knees.”
We speak as he is about to head out for a run before his shift in Supervalu Loughrea. Despite his physical complaints, he still clocks up 30 miles every second week and generally runs four days a week.
Jarlath receives injections to his left hip to keep the pain at bay while running on the road.
To give his joints a break, during the winter he runs cross country and often does a five-mile trek around Kylebrack Wood.
He is planning on running his 150th marathon in Cork on June 4, where a group of 20 made up of work colleagues, friends and running mates from Loughrea Athletics Club will join him.
Some are doing the 10k, others are doing the half marathon, but all will be there on the finishing line to cheer him on in the phenomenal achievement.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
