There are 24 lifeboat stations around the coast of Ireland. Provisional figures for 1986 show that their 26 lifeboats (Dun Laoghaire and Howth have both D class and fast afloat lifeboats) launched 181 times rescuing 98 lives. The RNLI's first lifeboat station in Ireland was set up in 1825 at Arklow, Co Wicklow and the newest is the D class station recently opened at Kilkeel, Co Down.There have been lifeboats in Ireland ever since the turn of the 19th century and the first RNLI station was set up there only two years after the birth of Sir William Hillary's Institution in 1824. All lifeboat stations today, both in Northern Ireland and the Republic, are run by the RNLI, and they all have an important part to play in the comprehensive lifeboat service available to any vessel in distress within our shared coastal waters.THE JUNE 1934 ISSUE of THE LIFEBOAT reported the death in Belfast of Joseph Devlin, a member of parliament, and reminded readers of the speech he made about the lifeboat service a few years earlier to the Belfast branch of the RNLI at their annual meeting.

". . . There are no religious, political or moral differences in an assembly of this character. We are all called here in the interests of humanity . . . There is no more sublime form of charity than that carried out by the men and women engaged in lifeboat work." His support of the RNLI is an excellent illustration of how the work of the Institution today, as much as at the time of Joseph Devlin's speech, is able to transcend the political and diplomatic complications that affect so many other trans-Irish Sea relationships.

A brief look at the history of lifeboats in Ireland is one way of understanding how and why the RNLI still operates so successfully both north and south of the Irish border. In 1824 when Sir William Hillary founded his National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, Ireland was already running some lifeboats of her own. In 1801 The Corporation for Preserving and Improving the Port of Dublin stationed a lifeboat at Clontarf near the entrance to the Liffey and by 1818 evidence exists of five lifeboats positioned between Howth and Dunleary (as Dun Laoghaire was then spelt) as protection for the growing traffic in Dublin Bay.

Two other stations, independent of Hillary's Shipwreck Institution, were set up in 1825, one at Newcastle, in the north and the other at Courtmacsherry in the south of Ireland. The following year the inspector general of the coastguard in Ireland reported that Arklow could well do with a lifeboat after a succession of bad shipwrecks in the neighbourhood and it was therefore 1826 when the first Irish lifeboat station was established under the direct control of what was to become the RNLI.

The financial crisis which hit the Institution in the 1840s and the great Irish famine of the same era took their toll on the lifeboat service in Ireland. In 1852, by which time the Institution had begun to regroup its resources, the very first issue of THE LIFEBOAT journal, in listing the number of lifeboats around the coast of England and Wales, added that "In Ireland, with an extent of 1,400 miles of coast, there are eight lifeboats, and they are inefficient. Yet there is no part of the United Kingdom in which wrecks are more frequent than on the coast of Wexford; and when we consider that, in addition to the cross channel trade, the whole of the foreign trade to Liverpool, Glasgow and Belfast passes through the Irish Sea, the frequency of wrecks on the east coast of Ireland need not create surprise." Matters improved through the second half of the century, however. In 1861 the RNLI took responsibility for the Dublin Bay lifeboats at Dun Laoghaire, Howth and Poolbeg, supplying them with new boats and shore installations.

More stations were established or adopted in ensuing years and by 1911, when Ireland's first motor lifeboat was sent to Wicklow, there were 35 RNLIstations on the island.

Then came the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. The RNLI now found itself running lifeboat stations in a country no longer under the rule of the British government. Were they to follow the coastguard and withdraw their services or were they to continue as before? Undoubtedly the voluntary and independent status of the Institution, not to mention the value of its work, had a major bearing on the favourable attitude of the Irish government towards it at a time when British government organisations (such as the coastguard) were too much a part of the old regime to consider retaining.

It was certainly in the interests of the Institution, whose aim is to provide an effective lifeboat service for all our costal waters, to continue to operate in the whole of Ireland and therefore when, in 1924, the Irish Ministry of Industry and Commerce confirmed that "the Government will be very glad to see the Institution continue its activities inthe Free State", promising that it would "extend to the work every faculty in its power," a common-sense arrangement was born which endures to this day.

Operationally, the RNLI has always treated Ireland as one unit. That is to say that there is one inspector who covers every station in the north and south. He has 24 lifeboat stations in his care, seven in Northern Ireland and 17 in the Republic. The present divisional inspector is Lt Jeff Mankertz who has been doing the job for the past two years and does not consider there is any fundamental difference between what is required of him in Ireland and of his colleagues in England, Scotland or Wales. He adds: "The crews accept me as an individual and judge me on my abilities as an inspector, not on any other criteria." He finds that throughout Ireland the RNLI is looked on as a universal force for good, it is "the lifeboat service" for our shared coastal waters.

But surely there must be differences, some may ask, what about the troubles in the North? It seems that where lifeboat stations are concerned religious and political disagreements play no significant part. The troubles certainly provide no obstacle to the effective operation of Northern Ireland's lifeboats which enjoy the close co-operation of their Scottish neighbours (particularly Islay, Campbeltown, Portpatrick and Girvan) together with the Isle of Man lifeboat stations and, of course, HM Coastguard's Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre on the Clyde which has a sub-centre in Belfast.

Lifeboat stations in the Republic of Ireland have their own maritime coordinating centre at Shannon and the east coast stations, particularly, benefit from the services of the British coastguard centres and sub-centres.

However, the lack of a coastguard service of its own does represent perhaps the only real difference between the way lifeboat stations operate in the Republic and their counterparts elsewhere. Whereas in the United Kingdom most first signs of trouble are picked up by or at least reported to the coastguard, very often in southern Ireland the alarm call is made directly to the lifeboat station's honorary secretary.

Without recourse to an auxiliary coastguard or mobile rescue unit, often his only method of checking whether the call is genuine or not is to launch the lifeboat to investigate. This inevitably leads to a higher proportion of false alarms and many honorary secretaries have set up their own system of local informers and lookouts to overcome the problem. Some lifeboat stations in the south and west of Ireland are extremely isolated, for instance Valentia, Arranmore and Gp'way Bay, and the more remote the st; lion the more it is likely to be the only means of coastal search and rescue for miles around.

Although automation is reducing the number of manned lighthouses run byIrish Lights, the lighthouse keepers and RNLI stations in Ireland have always worked closely together in search and rescue with much radioed and visual information passed from one to the other. The Irish government also has plans to increase helicopter cover and to improve coastal radio links. The Coast Lifesaving Service which operates in certain areas for cliff and coast rescue is also continuing to be supported by the Irish government.

The Republic of Ireland is a sparsely populated country. There are only 80 people to the square kilometre compared with 275 in Northern Ireland and 915 in England. Looking at it another way, the Republic has roughly only 2,000 people to every mile of coastline compared with the 18,000 per mile in the rest of the United Kingdom. This shows why it is only reasonable that the RNLI should make up the shortfall between funds raised in the Republic and the sum actually needed to equip and run her lifeboats. They are there, after all, to the benefit of all users of British and Irish coastal waters.

The Republic's fund raisers have a useful and palpable target to aim at in attempting to reduce that shortfall. The efforts of the national fund raising organiser, Jimmy Kavanagh, his team in Dublin and above all the financial branches and guilds throughout the country are working hard to achieve it.

The Irish government also makes an annual generous gift to the Institution which in 1986 amounted to £50,000.

The Dublin appeal, recently launched to help pay for Howth's new Arun class lifeboat, City of Dublin, has raised over £100,000 and new branches are being formed even in the remotest parts of western Ireland.

Fund raising in Northern Ireland benefits not only from the traditional generosity of Ulster people but, as RNLI regional organiser, Beth Duffin, believes, from the fact that people there know better the meaning of trouble and are therefore all the more willing to contribute to a cause set up to alleviate distress. The recently very successful City of Belfast appeal which raised over £200,000 towards the cost of Donaghadee's new Arun class bears witness to her theory. News reports about Northern Ireland tend to give outsiders an exaggerated view of the problems faced by the province's inhabitants and in reality fund raisers both north and south of the border face very similar challenges to those throughout the RNLI family.

And as with any family, blood— which in this case is represented by the common will to save human life—is far thicker than the waters of the Irish Sea.

Just as Bob Geldof, (an Irishman knighted by the Queen), fade the relief of famine a worldwide concern, so the RNLI successfully focuses the attention of these two islands towards a specific and worthwhile cause, that of saving life at sea..