A search and rescue team whose dogs were used to help track a missing man in Spain recently have asked MLAs to support them in their search for official recognition.
Award-winning charity K9 Search and Rescue NI visited Stormont on Monday to seek support after being denied access to the Department of Justice’s Northern Ireland search and rescue register.
The team was founded eight years ago by Ryan Gray. He got the idea thanks to the help of his pet dog Max, who had been rescued by the Assisi Animal Sanctuary.
Ryan said he recognised just how intelligent and driven Max the Labrador was, and – as someone who had dedicated his life to helping people with the Bangor coastguard rescue team – thought it would be useful to train his dog to do the same.
The K9 team now has 24 fully-trained volunteers and about 15 dogs, who Ryan says have all gone through rigorous qualifications, working under different disciplines.
Meet the K9 Search and Rescue dogs tasked with saving the public in Northern Ireland
Some are cadaver dogs that can quickly locate bodies. Others are trained in air-scenting, which relies on detecting scent particles that are carried by the wind.
Some are skilled in trailing, where the animal acquires the scent of the runner from a scent article and uses its sense of smell and instinctive behaviour to locate them.
Around a year ago, the charity applied to be listed on the Department of Justice’s Northern Ireland search and rescue register. It would mean that the PSNI could officially task the K9 organisation to specific missing person cases.
However, the application was recently rejected, and the K9 team later launched an appeal.
The charity’s chair, Joanne Dorrian, is also an advocate and lobbyist for missing people across the UK.
She came on board to help four years ago as she was curious to know what the dogs might be able to do to help find the body of her sister Lisa, who has been missing since being murdered at a caravan park in north Down in 2005.
“We’re the first group to actually apply for the register since it was formed by the Department of Justice,” Joanne said at Parliament Buildings.
“Unfortunately, the response came back to say there is no identifiable gap in the services to let us in. What we’re asking now is if that application process is correct.
“We need to be asking the hard questions around the policy. The group themselves who make the decision are the people who are already on the Northern Ireland search and rescue register.
“We’re interrogating all of that through our appeal and we’re in a process now, but we don’t know how long that will take or when the appeal will be heard. From January 1, we put a post out on our social media saying that we will be tasking through families again.
“That’s how we’ve always been tasked, but police would rather us be tasked by the PSNI, so we stopped that for over eight months and that’s why we received no callouts.
“So, when our application was rejected, we thought we needed to go back to doing what we do best regardless of getting into the register.”
The charity recently returned from assisting with the search in Alicante for Belfast man John George, whose body has since been found. They have also been involved in the current search for missing Larne man, Gary Patterson.
Previously, they were involved in searches following the Turkish earthquake disaster and the Creeslough explosion in Donegal.
A Department of Justice spokesperson told this newspaper: “K9 SAR NI have submitted [an] appeal to the department regarding the decision to decline its application for membership in the Northern Ireland search and rescue practitioners group.
“As the appeal process is currently ongoing, it would be inappropriate for the department to comment further at this time.”