A 999 emergency call was placed at around 7.40pm last night, after a passerby spotted two young swimmers in trouble out in Bundoran, off the Donegal coast.
A lifeboat was in the area within minutes, and the passerby had by then thrown a ring buoy down into the water.
There was a heavy swell in the water at the time, but the teenagers were plucked out just on time. A representative for the lifeboat crew said that the teenagers’ lives had probably been saved by that ring buoy. If they hadn’t been spotted, and had the buoy not been so readily available, the outcome might have been very different.