Wrong - it was worse. Professionals doing SAR without the right training and organisational safety systems in place and not adequately overseen by a regulator. The crew paid the price for a defective system.
The Irish Air Corps were chronically underfunded in the late nineties. I have no idea about now but back then it was not unusual for flying hours on some fleets to be heavily restricted for budgetary reasons - money being conserved to make sure the maritime patrol and government jet could stay flying until the end of the financial year.