The Government has underpinned its determination to introduce compulsory regulations for adventure centres by allocating £30,000 towards the existing safety scheme.
The new statutory safety authority which the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Dr Woods, intends to establish will "enhance already high standards", the Minister said yesterday. He was speaking at the presentation of the £30,000 to Mr Dawson Stelfox, chairman of the Association of Adventure Sports, in Dublin.
The funding has been provided as an interim measure to assist the association, the umbrella body for adventure sports, in running an intensified voluntary safety approval scheme. This will then be replaced by the new authority, which will administer compulsory regulations and will involve all centres. Dr Woods encouraged all national governing bodies, centres and organisations involved in adventure activities to associate themselves with the interim measures.
Last June, an inter-departmental committee advised that instruction in adventure sports be subject to statutory control, with penalties for breaches in safety guidelines. It found adventure sports here to be generally safe but warned that there could be "no guarantee" against the occurrence of an accident similar to that in Lyme Bay in Britain in 1993 when four canoeists drowned.
Mr Frank Nugent, chairman of the Mountaineering Council of Ireland which is affiliated to the Association of Adventure Sports, welcomed the funding. He said it was a measure of good faith in the existing standards. Both the association and the mountaineering council support the inter-departmental committee report findings.
