This article is from page 25 of the 2011-01-25 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 25 JPG
THE founding members of the Doolin Unit of the Irish Coastguard were recognised this weekend for the long and dedicated service to the people of Clare.
Six members of the Doolin Coastguard were awarded prestigious Long Service Medals at a ceremony at the new Costello Bay Coast Guard Station in Galway on Friday evening last.
Medals were awarded to founding members Mattie Shannon and Thomas Doherty, as well as long serving members Conor McGrath, Ray Murphy, Richie Jones and Ian Lambe. The coastguard, which has been the busiest in Ireland over the last 10 years, was founded 23 years ago by Mattie Shannon and Thomas Doherty – who are currently the stations officer in charge and deputy officer in charge respectively.
“The long service awards are given out to people who have been involved in the coastguard for 20 years so it shows the great commitment which has been there down the years. We also have a number of volunteers who have been involved for 17 or 18 years and they will qualify for awards in the coming years,” said Mattie.
“It is great for the volunteers who have given all that time over the years – it is nice to have that recognised. They will always have something now, they will have a medal as a token that they can pass on to show their commitment over the years.”
The Doolin unit of the Irish Coastguard has been so successful in attracting members in recent years that they currently have more volunteers than they can bring into the unit.
“We are recruiting at the moment. We have interviewed 12 people from the north Clare area and we are hoping to take five new members on over the coming weeks. The interviews are ongoing at the moment and we will be making up our mind come the end of February,” continued Mattie.
“We had a great response to this latest call for members but we are really looking to get members who are based as close as possible to Doolin. We had a lot of people applying from Ennis and different areas, which is great, but they really need to be based close to Doolin in case of an emergency. We will take on a few people living in the local area and then we will go a few miles outside of that for the last few people. But unfortunately for anyone who is living 10 of 15 miles away it is just a bit too far.”