Diving in Ireland

[John Gulliver]

Just a comment relating to Lou's thread on the Skelligs, which may or may not be relevant. There's excellent diving in Ireland, weather permitting (it doesn't always) but the last time I went (my third time, to Waterworld, in Tralee Bay), about 3 or 4 years ago, the Irish Underwater Federation (or whatever they call themselves) had suddenly imposed a 30 m depth limit for all sports diving, after having had several much-publicised fatal accidents. There is plenty of good shallow diving but the limit did mean that certain good sites were suddenly off limits. The dive centres simply wouldn't take divers there any more. I don't know what the situation is today or what qualifications they require to make exceptions to the 30 m rule but I suggest you find out before booking,.

(Edited by John Gulliver at 7:02 pm on Feb. 20, 2003)

[Rob Evans]

To be honest, I don't remember doing much sub-30 diving when we were in the Skelligs.  Masses to see around the 15s and 20s.

[bits]

Hi John

The Irish Underwater group are called CFT (www.scubaireland.com) I am a member of a CFT Club and we are not depth limited.  The CFT rules are tied to the CMAS ones so for sport divers our limit is 45 meters and 51 for extended range divers.

cheers
dave

[John Gulliver]

OK, great! Maybe it was the dive centres' organisation that imposed the 30 m limit. Ronnie Fitzgibbon,who owns Waterworld, told me that he had just written the new rules for all the Irish dive centres and they had accepted them, including his proposal for a 30 m limit, but maybe that no longer applies.

[Diving Dude]

If Mr Ronnie Fitzgibbon had re-written the rules it would obviously be to suit himself and not to benefit any of his divers, bit like him saying some of our group couldn`t dive with nitrox because he couldn`t find his o2 analiser, towards the end of the week guess what , one of our guys found it but couldn`t be bothered to argue with him as he obviously didn`t want to spend time filling tanks with anything other than air.

Just like him saying that he would arrange a local house for my family to stay in, I suppose 15 miles away over the conner pass in Dingle could be discribed as local.

Now this is not just for a few of us our party consisted of 30 divers and 23 non divers, we filled his accomodation and some other houses. Thats 53 people who now beleive that irish hospitality does not exist in certain parts of the Dingle peninsular.

Rant over, what a lovely day its been today, even begining to look forward to Stoney Bl**dy C tomorrow.