A MAN who made it ashore when his boat sank in Dunlough Bay near Mizen Head in west Cork twice assured a local farmer that two companions from the boat were alright and there was no need to call the emergency services, the €440 million drugs trial was told yesterday.
Farmer Michael O'Donovan, from Carrigeengour, Goleen, Co Cork, told the court that he twice suggested to a man identified by the State as Gerard Hagan that they call the emergency services to rescue another man in the sea but Mr Hagan assured him that there was no need.
Mr O'Donovan told the court how he heard a knock at the front door of his farmhouse at about 7am on July 2nd, 2007.
When he went out the back door and around the front to check, he found a man in soaking clothes "as if he had just come from the sea".
The man told him that his boat had crashed on rocks below in Dunlough Bay and he thought it might have broken up. He asked the farmer for something dry to put on, so he gave him a change of clothes and a cup of tea, said Mr O'Donovan.
Mr O'Donovan asked him if there were others with him on the boat, and the man said that there were possibly three and that one man had made it ashore with him but had swum back out to sea to look for a third man.
"I said I would have to ring the coastguard to get help - that he [ the missing man] would not last long in the water that morning but he said, No, no, they would be okay," Mr O'Donovan told the jury of nine men and three women at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.
Mr O'Donovan said he went out of the farmhouse and stood on a rock nearby where he looked out into the bay and saw some sort of dinghy with at least one man on board heading out of the bay towards the Mizen Head side.
He said that he again suggested to the soaking man that they get help for his companion in the water, but the man again said that there was no need.
"He said, No, no, they would be okay," said Mr O'Donovan.
The trial heard evidence of how Mr O'Donovan contacted his sister, Maureen Newman, who contacted a local member of the Goleen Search and Rescue Unit of the Irish Coastguard, which in turn contacted the Irish Coastguard, which launched a major rescue operation.
