Greg Daly
The Irish naval service is already learning lessons from the Mediterranean mission of the LÉ Eithne, according to the chaplain to the naval service.
Fr Des Campion, who has served as naval chaplain for 26 years and has worked in Kosovo and the Lebanon, told The Irish Catholic that the LÉ Eithne’s mission was the first of its type for the naval service, “and like any first mission you learn and improve on the next one”.
“That’s what we have at the Niamh at the moment,” he said, praising how “in just a couple of weeks, the crew has saved 1,280 people, including the birth of a baby”.
“With the Eithne I didn’t go out to visit them or be of assistance physically because we wanted all available space for refugees,” he explained, pointing out that “it was the first mission of that type, and we were finding our feet in that sense”.
This time, however, he intends to visit the crew perhaps about halfway through their deployment when they have a few days of rest and recreation at the Sicilian port of Catania.
He’ll not be alone in providing support for the sailors on this deployment, pointing out that the naval service offers “very good support in so far as we offer a service within the naval service called the PSS – the personal support service – including a social worker and two senior NCOs”.
Only the previous day, he told The Irish Catholic, “we sent two of our NCOs out to join the ship to be available for anyone who might want to talk – anybody who feels down, a bit affected, a bit disturbed by it”.
Such support could be invaluable in a mission which really is uncharted territory for Ireland’s armed forces, who, Fr Campion says, would have dealt with refugee situations in the past, but not to the same extent as in the Mediterranean.
