Following a decision by The Commissioners of Irish Lights, which controls the maintenance of navigational aids including lighthouses, Roches Point will no longer sound it’s foghorn from 2011. The Commissioners have decided that foghorns are no longer an effective aid to navigation. This is the final stage in a process that began 10 years ago to reduce the cost of maintaining navigational aids by eliminating unnecessary devices. Having consulted end-users, the CIL were confident that foghorns were now obsolete, and at best were a comfort to leisure mariners. Lighthouses will be fitted with Automatic Identification Signals (AIS) instead. It will therefore become increasingly important for the leisure marine community to carry adequate equipment on board their vessels to ensure the safety of their crew and other marine traffic.