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At the beginning of February 1979, the coastal community of West Cork was reeling from the Whiddy Island disaster and searching for answers.
The disaster occurred on January 8th, 1979 at about one in the morning when the oil tanker Betelgeuse exploded in Bantry Bay at the offshore jetty for the oil terminal at Whiddy Island.
The people of Bantry felt strongly that an inquiry into the tragedy should take place in Bantry, and nowhere else.
They felt so strongly about this that Bantry Town Council sent an appeal to then-Taoiseach, Jack Lynch as well as the Minister for Transport and Tourism.
As the inquiry would last for several weeks, indignation was expressed at the possibility of relatives of the deceased or eye witnesses having to spend so much time away from home.
‘It would be a terrible thing to take people out of town when they’re still in deep mourning,’ said Mr. J McCarthy at a Bantry Town Council meeting.
It was also suggested that an inquiry held anywhere other than Bantry would add fuel to rumours of a cover-up.
Bantry Town Council, represented by Chairman James O’Shea, felt that Bantry could facilitate such an inquiry, and it was important to re-establish the area as a tourism town and begin to stimulate the economy again.
However, members agreed to remove this from the appeal.
An investigation of such scale would have required about 500 hotel rooms to accommodate all relevant people.
Mr O’Shea, after conducting a survey of Bantry and surrounding areas, was assured this was possible while local people bristled at the assumption from non-locals that Bantry would be unable to accommodate 500 people when the town would easily see 10,000 tourists over the summer months.
At the time, Mr. Donal McCarthy said ‘we should insist on the inquiry being here and if it isn’t, we should call on the witnesses to boycott it.’
‘If it isn’t held in Bantry what can we do to protest? There must be some form of strong protest, we must show that we mean what we are saying,’ said Mr Minihane.
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