FOLLOWING THE death of 14-year-old Sea Scout Aoife Winterlich after a tragic accident at Hook Head last month, this newspaper has learned that the over-arching body responsible for scouting organisations nationwide has no plans to hold an investigation into the circumstances around her death.
The tragic teenager sustained a head injury after a freak wave dragged her into the water. Her head struck a rock during the fall.
The girl from the 55th South Circular Road Scout Group Dublin’s inner city, was among a group of four minors who were walking near the water’s edge unaccompanied during a structured excursion hosted by the organisation.
Concerns have been raised that the group should not have been permitted to walk in that area without supervision, because inclement weather conditions at the time meant the sea was extremely choppy.
However, Scouts Ireland has yet to launch its own investigation.
When contacted by this newspaper, the organisation declined to comment on the situation.
All four of the group entered the water, but two teenage males managed to swim to safety. The late Aoife Winterlich and another boy had to be airlifted.
Currently an investigation is underway by the Air Accident Investigation Unit into the rescue performed by the winch-man of the Rescue 117 crew.
During the rescue, the winch-man took the decision to two casualties at the same time and Miss Winterlich who was unconscious all of the time slipped and fell back into the water, but was recovered moments later.
Mayor of Wexford Ger Carthy said that he had hoped Scouts Ireland would have opened an investigation into the tragic accident, because the organisation has a duty of care to review what happened on the day.
“I presume they have policies to adhere to in terms of safety. Every organisation has to have safety statement to work off when they take children into their care,” said the mayor, who is out-spoken on the operations of the emergency services given his role as and advanced paramedic supervisor.
He continued: “They can’t run the review themselves either, generally it would be an outside agency that would do something like this. It needs to be open and transparent. At the end of the day lessons have to be learned from this. That area is a particularly hostile coastline that requires local knowledge if you are to engage with the rocks at all. It’s a very dangerous and treacherous area. The Aviation Authority were on to it the very next day and launched an investigation into what happened with the winch, but Scouts Ireland appear to have come out of this relatively unscathed.”
