Paddy Clancy
Coast Guard staff at Malin Head, Co Donegal, the world's oldest maritime radio rescue centre, have launched a campaign to prevent the station being scaled down.
They fear management plans to reduce operations there and at Valentia Island, Co Kerry, will lead to closure of both stations.
Malin Head staff sent a letter at the weekend to maritime community leaders, political representatives, trade unions and what they called civic and regional interests.
They claim the plan, already approved by Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey, is a reversal of a 2003 decision to upgrade the stations as part of a reorganisation of the Coast Guard Service. They also say it is against the Government's decentralisation and regionalisation policy.
The Malin Head station has been in operation for 105 years. Valentia is internationally acknowledged as the location for the original transatlantic cable station.
The Department of Transport has confirmed Malin Head and Valentia are to be scaled down as major marine rescue co-ordination centres in the next five years.
New centres will operate from Drogheda and a site yet to be chosen on the west coast, although Malin staff believe the search has been narrowed to west Cork, Ennis or Galway.
The department said much of the equipment at Malin, Valentia and the third centre, off St Stephen's Green, Dublin, is in urgent need of replacement. Coast Guard management says the changes are also prompted so that all operating stations will be close to shops, schools and universities, and to improve communications.