Pembroke protesters

the four men barricading themselves on the Isle of Inishmore...

Gary Jones

Gary Jones, an electrical engineer from Newport, South Wales, has in recent days become the effective spokesman for the four Irish Ferries officers who have barricaded themselves in the control room on the vessel. He has been giving interviews several times a day to media from home and abroad.

He says that his wife in Newport and his son at the University of Southampton were surprised to hear of the developments on the ship last Thursday and the role he had taken. Mr Jones is an electrical engineer on the Isle of Inishmore and is responsible for the maintenance of all electrical equipment from the bridge to the engine room.

Vincent Hetherington

Vincent Hetherington, a marine engineer, originally from Kimmage in Dublin, served on the Irish Ferries vessel the MV Normandy, operating to France, when the company sought to bring in another crew from eastern Europe. He says that at the time he was given a choice to take voluntary redundancy or to transfer to the Irish Sea route. He opted to move to the Isle of Inishmore as he was still young and wanted to stay with the company for whom he had worked for seven years.

He is married with three children in Waterford. He says that his family were a bit surprised when they heard that he was one of the group of officers who had locked themselves in the control room.

John Curry

John Curry says that he has been getting by on a sandwich a day locked in the control room of the vessel. A marine engineer from Dublin but now living in Gorey, he says that he and his colleagues "went into automatic mode" to secure the control room when they saw on their monitors people with baseball hats and uniforms running through the ship last Thursday. "We have various forms of drills - fire drills, bomb on board drills - regularly and we immediately believed that the ship was under attack. We peeked out from the control room after two or three minutes and found that there were two of these heavies outside," he says, referring to security personnel brought on board by Irish Ferries.

Brian Whitfield

Second officer on the Isle of Inishmore Brian Whitfield says that staff on the Irish Sea routes generated savings of several million euro for Irish Ferries in a benchmarking exercise some time ago. He says that management thanked the staff for its efforts at the time, but only a year later came back with its new outsourcing plan.

Mr Whitfield, originally from Dublin but now living in Mallow, Co Cork, says that he and his colleagues have very responsible positions. He says that they work one week on duty and one week off. While on duty they work 12 hours per day, seven days per week.

Mr Whitfield has been with the company for six years, but has been at sea since 1985.