Merchant Shipping (Investigation of Marine Casualties) (Amendment) Act 2022
|
Notification of marine casualties to Marine Survey Office | ||
|
13. (1) An owner, charterer, master, skipper, person in charge, ship’s agent, ship’s manager or ship’s husband of a vessel involved in a marine casualty shall, by using the quickest feasible means, notify the Chief Surveyor or any other marine surveyor in the Marine Survey Office of the Department of Transport of the casualty immediately he or she is aware that the marine casualty has occurred or commenced, or as soon as practicable thereafter. | ||
(2) There shall be included in the notification such relevant information as is known to the person notifying the marine casualty, including the name and description of the vessel, its position, the number of persons on board and as accurate a summary as possible of the marine casualty. | ||
(3) A person required by subsection (1) to notify a marine casualty who, without reasonable excuse, fails to do so shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable— | ||
(a) on summary conviction, to a class A fine or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or to both, or | ||
(b) on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding €100,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years or to both. | ||
(4) A summary offence under this section may be prosecuted by the Minister for Transport. | ||
(5) This section shall not apply to vessels of the Naval Service of the Defence Forces or to warships of another state. | ||
(6) In this section— | ||
“Chief Surveyor” means the person from time to time holding (including temporarily), or performing the functions of, the position with the designation Chief Surveyor in the Marine Survey Office of the Department of Transport; | ||
“Defence Forces” means the defence forces raised and maintained under the Defence Act 1954 ; | ||
“marine casualty”, “owner” and “vessel” shall have the meanings assigned to them by section 2(1) of the Act of 2000; | ||
“warship” has the meaning assigned to it in Article 29 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and means a ship belonging to the armed forces of a state bearing the external marks distinguishing such ships of its nationality, under the command of an officer duly commissioned by the government of the state and whose name appears in the appropriate service list or its equivalent, and manned by a crew which is under regular armed forces discipline. |