General Lighthouse Authorities (Beacons: Automatic Identification System) Order 2006

My Lords, I declare an interest as a commissioner for the Irish lighthouse service, which the Minister has mentioned. I support the order and I can assure your Lordships that I have seen the AIS operating live both from the Irish Lights tender and in trial from a desktop in Dublin. It is a fantastic and very simple system. One of the great things about it is that most ships around our coast are less than 300 tonnes—yachts, in other words, of one size or another—and certainly my yacht, and the yachts of most yachtsmen now travelling the seas, will carry a small version of the AIS, which does not transmit but can receive. That means that if you are in a shipping lane—crossing the English Channel, for example—you can see other ships on your AIS screen as targets. They will have their MMSI number, which is in effect their telephone number, and you can talk to them if you are worried about getting in their way or about what they are doing. You can do similar things from a ship’s bridge with land-based navigation aids or with buoys. There is an experimental buoy out now in Larne harbour. One of the important things to ferries travelling in Larne harbour is wave height—believe it or not, there are restrictions on wave heights. The buoy will be able to tell skippers what the wave heights are on the approach to the harbour, and so on. It is a fantastic system, it is not very expensive, and it is being used now all around our coast. In Ireland, we are moving around the coast and starting to make it one of our navigation aids. It really is fantastic.