Emergency services assemble in Mayo town for joint operation training

A drone whizzes over ahead and a Fire Service vehicle speeds by with flashing lights as the Quay in Westport is the stage for a ground breaking training operation. 

The West Mayo town was the epicentre of emergency service training this week as six state agencies complete joint training exercises on sea and land at Quay of popular tourist town. 

Members of the Fire Services, Civil Defence, Ambulance, Coast Guard, Customs, Gardaí and HSE joined together to trial cutting edge technology. 

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Storm Éowyn highlighted how critical our mobile phone networks are and how vulnerable they can be during the increasingly severe weather conditions.

Islanders are particularly vulnerable and a medical emergency during Storm Éowyn on Inisturk “brought home the real need for communications. Especially on an island, you need to give that public health nurse the ability to be able to communicate”, explains Jim Leahy, head of network innovation consultancy in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in the office of the Irish Chief Information Officer. 

Over the last five years, the state has developed its own private network to ensure quick and clear communication between the emergency services. 

It is planned that before Christmas, the medical centre on Inisturk will have a satellite that can connect to the state’s private network “that will allow us to transmit from around the health center up to a satellite and make a phone call to anywhere in Ireland.”

It will mean that “if we have another emergency when there's no terrestrial communications, they'll be able to make a phone call”, says the head of innovation consultancy at DPER. 

A satellite, similar to the one that will be installed on Inisturk

It is envisaged that generators will also be installed as “there's no point in deploying satellite communications” if you can’t guarantee electricity. 

Saving lives 

The training exercise on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Quay in Westport was all about testing how extending the state’s private network can work at sea and in rural areas with no mobile network coverage.

For the purpose of the project, a carpark at the Quay in Westport was turned into a command and control centre for a simulated missing person scenario. Ten gigabytes of the private network were extended to the area.

Westport was chosen as the ideal training ground due to its rural location, coastline and because it is on the state’s private high speed fibre network.

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“We set up comms here because there's no communications in that area. We used our own mobile network on the back of a satellite connection back into our core in Dublin, and that allows those people to communicate with each other and also with command and control below in the Quay carpark," explained Leahy. 

Live feed from the drone was fed back in real-time to the command and control centre, as well as members of the different agencies communicating with one another over the private network. 

The lessons learnt over the two day exercise will help the emergency services in their vital work, especially when it comes to saving lives. 

“We have the Civil Defence, we have the Coast Guard, we have Customs, and we have all the relevant agencies, and we're all able to talk to each other. When you have a search or when you have somebody out in the elements, the quicker you can get to that person, provide medical assistance, the better chance they have of surviving," Padraig Mullarkey, Detective Inspector with Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau explained to The Mayo News.

The Detective Inspector was part of the M.V. Matthew operation and knows first hand the importance of communication technology. 

The high profile seizure of over two tonnes of cocaine, with an estimated value of over €157m was the the largest cocaine seizure in Irish history.

The interagency operation in July 2023 showed the importance of the different arms of the state working together. 

He urges coastal residents to “err on the side of caution” if they see anything suspicious. 

“A lot of people living on the coast know what vessels should be coming and going. If they see foreign registered vessels or see suspicious activity and or the movement of the bales that's not consistent with what they normally see, they should attempt to err on the side of caution, pick up the phone, ring coastal watch or ring the local Garda station.”

Mission critical group at EU level

The lessons learnt at the Quay in Westport will also be shared with other member states of the EU and can be applied. 

David Lund, Project program coordinator for the Public Safety Communication Europe forum (PSCE), notes that the extra coverage that was tested in Westport “is a crucial problem that every country faces. Some countries are very rural and Ireland is quite rural.”

This is especially important where “commercial mobile operators don't actually deploy to rural areas as much because there's not as many customers. But public safety really needs connectivity wherever they are.”

Delegates from Scotland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden joined the multiple state agencies to observe the training exercise at the Quay in Westport. 

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