It is right and fitting that An Taoiseach Micheál Martin thanked the RNLI members, both present and past, for their dedication to 200 years of fulfilling a role that he referred to as a ‘vocation’.
251 lives is no small thing; taking into account the innumerable children of those men and women, their grandchildren, their partners and the mothers and children of those rescued, whose lives would have been changed irrevocably had their loved ones not returned from sea.
This country is saved in countless ways, big and small, by people who give hours and sometimes years of their lives for a greater good.
The RNLI are just one example of these good people; they populate mountain rescue crews, homeless and addiction societies, charity shops, not to mention the unknown and hidden work that carers do, some still just children themselves, to stop the gaps in what can’t, or won’t, be covered by the state coffers.
In May, more volunteers were relied on as they patrolled Inchydoney. Cork County Council did not have lifeguards on patrol, it being out-of-season.
The Council are not responding to climate change in this very practical matter.
We have had a glorious May, and yet when it is put to the local authority – funded by our property tax, and our business rates – that lifeguards be on duty when the weather is 22 degrees and rising, the response is an unmoving and dogmatic adherence to the date of June 1st.
We may have rain for the next four months.
There might be stretches of beach only visited by the most hardened of sea-swimmers, dutifully watched by a full complement of lifeguards but when when they are vitally needed, there’s no one watching.
This is not to suggest that it’s a matter of waving a magic wand, but there has to be a little imagination shown when staffing our beaches.
Farmers taking in hay don’t have an unmoving date in their heads; they follow the sun.
You can no more tell a child they must wait for the meteorological summer to begin before they can go for a swim than you can hold back the tide.
The effects of climate change impact too on birds, who likewise don’t nest or lay their eggs according to a calendar.
BirdWatch Ireland quotes data from the British Trust for Ornithology, where they have records of robins and blackbirds nesting earlier and earlier on an annual basis now.
BirdWatch Ireland themselves studied late-nesting birds, and found that yellowhammers, goldfinches, and greenfinches as well as others are now nesting well into August and September.
63% of Ireland’s birds are of ‘serious conservation concern’, they’re nesting earlier and later in the year, but the hedge-cutting season hasn’t moved an inch.
Moreso, trees are falling or need to be felled because of the combined effects of Ash diebck and storm damage.
There are no easy answers, but it is imperative that conversations and decisions, exceptions and allowances, are put on the table now.
Nature does not follow a calendar of 365 days, with 12 neatly laid-out months, and it is fallacy to keep our human operations following the Georgian calendar when the environment we love and rely on, is working on another, infinitely more powerful schedule.
