Last Saturday 500 kids from around Ireland packed into the RDS for a concert, before entering they got to meet members of the emergency services and try out their equipment. The kids were guests of the Share a Dream Foundation. Boybands - Taken, Stage One, Fresh Re, The Reverse, Wes Monroe, Girlbands - Rouges and GB13, Singers Ryan Dolan, Cian, Sara Lou all took time out to join the kids and show them a fantastic day out.

In attendance from the emergency services were the Garda Mounted Unit and Traffic Corps, Irish Defence Forces from Rathmines Barracks, Dublin Fire Brigade from Donnybook station and Irish Coast Guard from Howth station.  As you can see from the picture the big kids enjoyed the day too!

With the recent heatwave we have seen a huge increase in the number of craft using the water. Unfortunately despite a lot of media focus on water safety the number of boats compliant has dropped since the last review in mid June; this is perhaps in part due to people taking to the water for the first time. Irish Coast Guard, RNLI, CRBI and Lifeguards units around the country including the compliance monitoring patrol boat at Howth have experienced a busy season but are continuing to try to get the safety message out there to stop further tragedies.

Locally the stats for Dublin Bay show some improvement by paddle boards, however the number is startling at 88% not wearing any kind of flotation device. Today 2 persons were encountered in Dublin bay on paddle boards with cooler boxes attached to the boards and no lifejackets. While they were within 250 meters from their departing point, an offshore wind could have had serious consequences  for the pair. To note we are not including paddle boarders who are wave surfing in the statistics.

We encourage people to take the time to visit www.safetyonthewater.ie. Also just released is the free smartphone (Apple and Android) app called safetrx which helps anyone from Kitesurfers to Yachts to track their travels and alert someone if they don't return as planned. For more details visit  http://www.safetrxapp.com/.

At 1420 today Howth Coast Guard and Howth lifeboat were tasked to a report of a person in the water at Howth harbour. When members of the Coast Guard unit arrived the person had already been taken from the water. The unit volunteers took the person into the station house for first aid care while waiting for an ambulance to arrive on scene. The unit were stood down at 1500.

Incident 49/13

Yesterday evening (Thursday) the Gardai requested assistance from the Irish Coast Guard with a search for a missing person on Howth Head.  The full team from the Howth unit were paged. As the team were assembling the Gardai  located the person safe and well. The team was then stood down by the Coast Guard operations centre.

 Incident 48/13