Fine Gael MEP, Mr John Cushnahan, has said the EU must shoulder more of the cost of providing search and rescue services off the Irish coastline, as marine emergency services were stretched to their limit.
The Government must push for this financial input at a forthcoming EU intergovernmental conference which will consider reform of the Community's powers and responsibilities, he said. Proposals for an EU coastguard should also be tabled at the meeting, the Munster MEP urged.
Mr Cushnahan's call comes after a series of recent incidents at sea, the latest of which involved the successful rescue of 17 Spanish and Portuguese crew members from a fishing vessel 150 miles west of Shannon earlier this week.
The crew took to three life-rafts when the Milford Eagle caught fire early on Monday morning. The Irish Coastguard Sikorsky helicopters from Shannon and Dublin airlifted the crewmen ashore in hazardous weather, with assistance from an RAF Nimrod and an Irish flagship, the Alimar.
Ironically, both the Milford Eagle and Alimar had been arrested for alleged fishing offences by the Naval Service last month.
Yesterday, the Naval Service patrol ship LE Deirdre took the abandoned vessel in tow in a heavy swell, and headed for the shelter of Donegal Bay. The tow was due to be transferred to a Spanish vessel commissioned by the owners, and it is expected that it will be brought back to Spain.
Mr Cushnahan said the Naval Service and emergency rescue services were "doing an excellent job in very difficult circumstances", but were "under-resourced, undermanned and using outdated equipment in certain sectors". The legal responsibility in relation to pollution had been brought into focus after the recent oil spillage 88 miles west of the Aran islands, he said.
Mr Cushnahan said the Naval Service was involved in almost a dozen major drug operations last year, including the interception of the Posidonia with £15 million worth of cannabis on board, in November, while the coastguard had saved or assisted 6,445 people in 1,679 incidents.
"I would urge the Government to put a proposal to the EU on the table at a time when the Community is co-ordinating its strategy on a number of fronts," he said.
The Fine Gael defence spokeswoman, Ms Frances Fitzgerald, meanwhile, has accused the Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, of being "past his sell-by date".
Delays in publication of the White Paper on defence had contributed to falling morale which was at an "all-time low", and the widening gulf between the Minister and senior members of the Defence Forces over the paper's draft contents was a "major cause for concern", she said in a statement.
