Family Tragedy on the West Cork Coast

Divers from the Irish Naval Service, searching for a missing Polish man and his 13-year-old son off the coast of West Cork, have found and recovered a body near the Natural Arch, just south of Cod's Head.

The body has meanwhile been identified as that of the missing man, 40-year-old Piotr Latek. His son Matthias is still missing, and there is little hope to find him alive. The search for him has now been suspended for the night and will resume tomorrow morning.

Mr. Latek had been living in the area for about two years and was employed as a baker at the Breadcrumb Bakery in Kenmare, Co. Cork, while his wife and only son Matthias had remained in his native Poland.

A few days ago Matthias had arrived in Ireland to spend the summer holidays with his father. According to local sources, the two left Kenmare on Sunday morning in Mr. Latek's car to go on a fishing trip to the West Cork coast.

It is believed that they first did some fishing close to Kenmare, but then drove further down the coastal road towards Castletownbere and later to Allihies.

When local people noticed that they had not returned, an alarm was raised yesterday morning. Gardaí, the Coast Guard, lifeboats and local emergency services began a search of the area and soon found Mr. Latek's car, empty and parked at the entrance to a pathway, leading towards the dangerous rocks at Cod's Head, a very remote and exposed part of the rugged coastline.

Later some angling equipment - identified as belonging to Mr. Latek - was found on the rocks. But there was no sign of the missing father and son.

The search continued all day yesterday, but the Coast Guard became ever more doubtful that they would find the two missing Poles alive, two days after they had disappeared.

It is thought the father and son may have been swept from the rocks at Cod's Head in high winds and rough sea conditions.

John Falvey of the Coast Guard station on Valentia Island said that Gardaí and the emergency services were only alerted on Tuesday morning, and that on Sunday the conditions in the Cod's Head area were "windy, with strong gusts and high seas".

This morning a team of divers from the Naval Service joined the search and found the body of Mr. Latek in the water.
They will continue looking for 13-year-old Matthias Latek in the morning, but with almost no hope now to find him alive after four days.

The tragic death of Piotr Latek and presumed death of his young son has deeply shocked the local community in Kenmare and along the coast of West Cork. Accidents like this are quite rare, but they do occur from time to time, mostly when people unfamiliar with the terrain and the rough conditions on the rugged coastline are surprised by severe weather.

Meanwhile the dead man's father has arrived in Ireland, and his wife is expected tomorrow.

People want Coast Guard Stations to remain

A delegation of residents from Valentia Island (off the west coast of Co. Kerry) visited the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport this afternoon and challenged the proposal by the Department of Transport and the management of the Irish Coast Guard to close down the coastal radio station on their island (pictured above).

People from Malin Head in Co. Donegal also attended the hearing, to protest against the planned closure of the coastal maritime station in their county.

The people from Valentia and Malin Head, calling themselves fittingly the 'Save Our Stations' (SOS) group, have accused the Coast Guard management of "protecting their own jobs against being moved out of Dublin" and giving a "misleading and factually inaccurate proposal" to the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey to close the coastal marine radio stations.

The Coast Guard management has rejected this, claiming that "equipment at both stations is out-dated" and that it would be "more efficient to replace the two old stations with one modern station". This has been proposed for an urban centre in the West, possibly at Shannon.

What puzzles me, as a former naval officer, is that no-one in the Coast Guard management has thought of modernising the long-established stations and giving them up-to-date modern equipment. Too many people in the upper echelons of our Civil Service seem to forget that Ireland is an island and depends in many ways on the sea and on the maritime transport routes.

Since the last general election we have no longer a Department of the Marine, which - in a government re-organisation - has been incorporated into the Department of Transport, whose priorities are landbased and whose current head - Minister Noel Dempsey - has no interest in the sea.

The lighthouses around our coastline have been automated now for nearly twenty years, with no more lighthouse keepers being recruited. Thus the nation's service to the maritime community is ever more depleted of the human element. I think this is a very bad mistake. Even though the principal functions of a lighthouse can now be done easily by automated computerised systems, no machine can do the watch duties the traditional lighthouse keepers performed for centuries.

And now the Coast Guard wants to give up their long-established coastal radio stations as well, obviously ignoring the fact that they have done great service to shipping and also helped to save many lives at sea. The residents of Valentia Island and Malin Head, who know from first-hand experience how valuable these stations are, presented their valid arguments today to politicians from Dail and Seanad. One can only hope that they were not only listening, but will act soon on behalf of the coastal and maritime communities and protect the stations from closure.

The Emerald Islander

P.S. Meanwhile, in a separate development, the managements of the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) and the telecommunications company Eircom have rejected statements made in the Coast Guard's report about the low quality of their service to coastal areas. It remains a fact, however, that electricity supply and modern telecommunications services - in particular the now ever more important broadband service for access to the internet - are not of the same quality and standard in the rural areas along the west coast as one finds them in our cities. This situation needs to change drastically and quickly.