Crew rescued by coast guard helicopter after fishing boat sinks in Irish waters
THE crew of a fishing boat which sunk off the coast of Co. Louth have been rescued.
Two people were manning the vessel, which sunk off the coast of Drogheda in the early hours of this morning (May 29).
Two crew members were rescued by the Irish Coast Guard helicopter
They were both successfully located and rescued by the Dublin-based Irish Coast Guard helicopter R116.
'The Coast Guard Marine Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Dublin was alerted shortly before midnight following the detection of an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) transmission,' a Department of Transport spokesperson confirmed.
'MRCC Dublin immediately tasked the R116 helicopter, Drogheda Coast Guard Unit, and Clogherhead RNLI to the area,' they added.
The Coast Guard helicopter happened to be conducting overnight training at the time of the incident and therefore 'arrived quickly on the scene' the spokesperson added..
'The helicopter used its night vision infra-red system, night vision goggles and other search tools to locate and recover the two casualties from the water,' they explained.
'The activation of the vessel's EPIRB and the use of NVIS technology were key aspects of this successful rescue.'
Both crew members were wearing life jackets when rescued and were 'immediately transferred to the care of the HSE'.
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If you are taking unpaid time out of work, you will not be permitted to contribute to the company pension scheme for that period. However, if you did not use up your full pension tax relief threshold the previous year – the 20 per cent of salary in your thirties for instance – and you have the financial resources available, you can make additional pension contributions via an AVC or a personal retirement savings account (PRSA) up to the end of October the following year. As an example, Patricia (35) earns €55,000 and last year contributed 6 per cent (€3,300) to a company pension, a figure that was matched by her employer. That 6 per cent is well below the 20 per cent limit on pension investment that she can get tax relief on. Patricia has taken unpaid time off work this year to spend more time with her children who are just making the transition to school. She won't be able to invest in the company pension scheme as she's not being paid. However, as long as she acts before the end of October – including filing a tax return – she can put up to €7,700 into an AVC or PRSA and get a tax refund for 2024 of €3,080, which means the €7,700 investment will only cost her €4,620. You can only go back one year like that but at least it will help. What are the benefits of flexible hours? Another approach, says Locktons' McKenna is to see if your employer is prepared to be more flexible around work patterns. With hybrid and remote work more common, and more practicable than it used to be, many people can continue to work as long as employers allow wriggle room. That would, for instance, allow the carer (woman or man) to put in their work hours when their partner has finished their more regular working hours. The main advantage, in pension gender gap terms, is that as you are still being paid, you can continue to make contributions to the company pension scheme. Also, as you are earning income, there is income tax against which you can offset the tax relief on those contributions. Otherwise, apart from the one year lookback arrangement we spoke about above, any contributions you make to an AVC while out of paid employment – even if you had the financial wherewithal to do so – would have no tax to claim relief from, reducing the attraction. There are other factors that also disproportionately play against women where improvements are more at the gift of government and industry rather than something over which individuals have control. [ Health takes a back seat when working and raising young children. We just get on with it Opens in new window ] PwC's O'Dwyer points to waiting and vesting periods for occupational pensions. Many company schemes do not allow staff to join their scheme for six months after they start work. And, if you leave the company within two years of joining an occupational scheme, companies can, and do, simply give you back any contributions you made to the scheme in that time. That means you lose out on the benefit of any employer contributions and the investment performance on those and your own refunded contributions not just to the point where you leave the business but also over the following years right up to when you retire. Because of women's employment patterns, O'Dwyer says this works more against women than men. He also notes that in an era when technology allows for immediate action on signing people up to schemes, there is no justification for waiting periods. While there are ongoing criticisms of the incoming mandatory workplace pension scheme – auto-enrolment or My Future Fund – planned for next year, O'Dwyer notes that it will at least ensure that people are signed up from the date of employment without waiting periods and that their pension fund will remain invested even if they do move jobs or otherwise leave the employer within two years. He notes that there is more Government could do; for instance, the State could continue to make its contributions to a person's auto-enrolment account during periods of unpaid leave in line with the level of State contributions before the leave. Other countries, O'Dwyer says, have looked at one-off contributions to women's pensions at events such as childbirth for social policy purposes in a world where more and more western economies are concerned at low rates of childbirth. 'Having children is very important (for an economy) and financial support is very important,' he says. 'There are ways it can be done. There is a cost but it is arguably an investment in the future.' You can contact us at OnTheMoney@ with personal finance questions you would like to see us address. If you missed the last newsletter by Dominic Coyle on setting up a bank account before coming to Ireland , you can read it here .
