Sligo mother installs much-needed lifebuoys

A Sligo mother, whose two sons were drowned in the Garavogue on Christmas Eve in 1998, has won a long-running battle to give others the chance denied to her sons.

On the night that Guida McCarrick's sons, Seán (21) and Cronan (19), went into the river there were no lifebuoys available.

But today there are 24, with plans to install more early in the new year.

The campaign to erect lifebuoys along the 1½-mile stretch of river, which claimed five lives in as many years, got under way only when Ms McCarrick offered to raise the money herself.

Lack of funds and the likelihood that the lifebuoys would be vandalised were cited as reasons for the inaction.

Her sons were on their way to a Christmas Eve party when the tragedy happened.

"My son Cronan went in after his brother and if there had been a lifebuoy there he would have taken it with him," Ms McCarrick said. "They were found wrapped around each other. Fate is fate and who knows what would have happened, but I think they could have been saved."

Cronan, who three times won the Forbairt award at the 'Young Scientist of the Year' competition, jumped in to save his brother, who was described at their funerals as full of ideas and exuberance.

"It is always hard, but at this time of year when everyone else is having fun we cannot join in, not yet anyway," Ms McCarrick said. "But this year it is a consolation to know that there are safety measures in place if something bad happens."

Ms McCarrick has one surviving child, Jenny (24), "who holds me up and keeps me going".

Angry that financial considerations were preventing the installation of lifebuoys, she decided to take responsibility for fund-raising.

A committee was formed with the Sligo Rotary and Lions clubs and the local press backed the campaign.

"We have raised €7,000 so we are there now," Ms McCarrick said.

Cllr Arthur Gibbons (Sinn Féin), who was a friend of Seán McCarrick, won the support of colleagues on the borough council, which in recent weeks provided 12 lifebuoys.

The harbour board has erected another 12 in the harbour area.

One of the lifebuoys was removed within 24 hours but recovered later from the river.

"We need education so that schoolchildren will understand just how important it is that they don't interfere with these," Ms McCarrick said.

The Garavogue Lifebuoy Campaign intends to purchase alarmed lifebuoys, while Ms McCarrick hopes to erect plaques along the river bank in memory of the dead.

"It will help to put faces on the terrible things that happened."