Three teenage girls were rescued from the sea at Strandhill, Co Sligo on Wednesday after the alarm was raised by a local resident walking the beach.
The rescue, which involved members of local surf schools and the Co Sligo Surf Club, has reignited the debate about whether lifeguards should be on duty at a beach that has been designated as unsafe for swimming by Water Safety Ireland.
The three girls, described as being in their early teens, had travelled from Longford with one parent to spend the day at the busy resort and were in the water at about 2pm when a local man spotted them being swept out.
One local resident who witnessed the rescue said the girls were very fortunate that there were waves on Wednesday because otherwise, as in recent days, there would have been no surfers at the beach.
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While it is understood that there were no surfers in the water at the time, there were surf instructors close by and when the alarm was raised, paddle boards were obtained from a nearby “surf rescue locker”, a voluntary local safety initiative.
One of the three rescued girls was taken by ambulance to Sligo University Hospital but it is understood her injuries were not serious, although she was described as being very traumatised by her ordeal.
“Everyone is alive because once again a local person spotted the danger and knew immediately that the girls were in the wrong place,” said one man. He said that if lifeguards had been on duty, the teenagers would not have been in the water at that location.
Local resident and Fine Gael county councillor Sinead Maguire said the girls were alive because of the quick thinking of the local man who raised the alarm. “But we cannot continue to rely on the extraordinary courage of local people to do this job. We need professionally trained lifeguards on duty,” she added.
Councillor Maguire highlighted earlier this week how frequently local surf schools are involved in rescuing people who get into difficulty while swimming in Strandhill.
She said the girls had not noticed the electronic and other warning signs and had entered the sea “oblivious to the dangerous currents”.
Having lifeguards to patrol the beach was imperative “if other lives are to be saved”, she added.
Another local said if there had been no swell and no surfers in the vicinity “it might have been a different story”. He said it was hard to blame teenagers “when it is a scorching hot day and the sea is so inviting”.
Water Safety Ireland recently defended the decision not to have lifeguards at Strandhill, saying there were “tragic reasons” why people should not swim on the main beach there.
In 1998 three teenage boys died in a drowning tragedy at Strandhill. Referring to that tragedy, deputy CEO of Irish Water Safety Ireland, Roger Sweeney said the teenagers had been only waist high in the water when swept out to sea. “The currents that exist then have not gone away and the beach remains as dangerous for swimming now as it was then,” he said.