The Irish Coast Guard (IRCG; ) is part of the Department of Transport of Ireland. The primary roles of the Coast Guard include maritime safety and search and rescue. The Irish Marine Search and Rescue Region (IMSRR) is the area over which the Coast Guard has responsibility. This area is bordered by the UK Search and Rescue Region. History The British Water Guard (formed 1809) and (Preventive) Coast Guard (formed 1822) extended to Ireland as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. During this period the Coast Guard played revenue protection and coastal defence roles, as well as forming part of the Royal Naval Reserve. In the 1850s, the Admiralty took over the Coast Guard; officers stationed in Ireland complained that their naval career was retarded relative to those in England. The Irish Free State was formed in 1922, and Tom Casement (brother of Roger Casement) tried unsuccessfully to establish a new Irish coast guard. In late 1923 Casement instead became first Inspector of a new Coast Life Saving Service (CLSS). In 1927, before the Irish Naval Service had been formed, the Admiralty discussed the possibility of CLSS participation in minesweeping of the Treaty Ports. During the Emergency declared in the Second World War, the Department of Defence established a separate Coast Watch after the use of the CLSS to keep watch for belligerent ships and aircraft was vetoed by the Department of Industry and Commerce, which ran the CLSS. The CLSS was later renamed the Coast and Cliff Rescue Service (CCRS). In 1979 there were 54 stations, 51 equipped with breeches buoys and three only with ladders for cliff rescue. A 1990 inquiry into air sea rescue chaired by retired Garda Commissioner Eamonn Doherty recommended transferring responsibility from the Irish Air Corps to a new emergency service. The then government accepted the recommendation in August 1990, and the service was established in the then Department of the Marine by minister Michael Woods in May 1991 under the name "Slánú — The Irish Marine Emergency Service" (IMES), and subsumed the CCRS. In February 2000 the name was changed to the Irish Coast Guard in accordance with the wishes of many of its personnel. The spelling "Coast Guard" (as opposed to "Coastguard") is intended to hark back to its nineteenth-century origins; the British Coastguard adopted the single-word spelling in 1925, after the Free State had separated. In 2012