Whiddy safety advice has still not been enacted
Successive governments have failed to act on recommendations made following the Whiddy Island disaster, which killed 51 people 40 years ago.
International lawyer Michael Kingston, whose father Tim died in the incident, said this Government is not doing enough to protect maritime workers.
Representatives of many of the victims of the Whiddy Island disaster will attend tomorrow’s 40th anniversary commemoration in Bantry.
On January 8, 1979, a localised fire led to a series of explosions on the oil tanker Betelgeuse, owned by Total Oil SA, at the oil terminal in Whiddy, which was operated by Gulf Oil Corporation.
Fifty people died that night. Later, a Dutch diver working on the salvage operation also died.
Francoise Letellier, who was then the honorary French consul in Cork, will accompany 44 French visitors for the commemoration, including wives, siblings, and grandchildren of many of those who died, as well as two of the French divers who searched for bodies.
The group is due to arrive in Cork this afternoon and to have dinner tonight in the Westlodge Hotel in Bantry, which became the hub of operations in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
Then, at 11am tomorrow, a Mass will be held at St Finbarr’s Church, in the town, in memory of those who died, to be followed by a wreath-laying ceremony. That afternoon, the families will be taken by boat to the offshore jetty for prayer and to throw flowers into Bantry Bay.
A tribunal of inquiry, under Mr Justice Declan Costello, heard evidence from 184 witnesses. Its report criticised named individuals and both Gulf and Total for shortcomings that contributed to the disaster.
However, Mr Kingston said that while Ireland ultimately ratified the Solas Convention (International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea) following the disaster, the Government was still not doing all it could to improve marine safety.
They are still doing it today, in relation to other outstanding conventions in relation to marine safety,” he said, adding that other conventions were “sitting on government shelves as we speak”.
He said the Government had failed to introduce laws relating to corporate manslaughter, which could have been used, had they been in place at the time, against the companies involved in the Whiddy disaster.
