39. — (1) Where grain is loaded on board any ship registered in the State, or is loaded within any port in the State on board any ship, all necessary and reasonable precautions shall be taken to prevent the grain from shifting, and if such precautions as aforesaid are not taken, the owner or the master of the ship, or any agent of the owner who was charged with the loading or with sending the ship to sea laden with the grain, shall be guilty of an offence under this subsection, and the ship shall be deemed for the purposes of Part V of the Principal Act to be unsafe by reason of improper loading.

(2) (a) Where any ship, having been loaded with grain outside the State without the taking of all necessary and reasonable precautions to prevent the grain from shifting, enters any port in the State so laden, the owner or master of the ship shall be guilty of an offence under this subsection, and the ship shall be deemed for the purposes of Part V of the Principal Act to be unsafe by reason of improper loading.

(b) This subsection shall not have effect if the ship would not have entered any such port but for stress of weather or any other circumstance that neither the master nor the owner nor the charterer (if any) could have prevented or forestalled.

(3) (a) Without prejudice to the generality of subsections (1) and (2) of this section, any particular precaution prescribed by rules made by the Minister under this subsection, in relation to the loading of ships generally or of ships of any class, as being a precaution to be treated for the purposes of those subsections as a necessary or reasonable precaution to prevent grain from shifting, shall be so treated in the case of ships generally, or of ships of that class, as the case may be.

(b) This subsection shall not apply where a ship is loaded in accordance in all respects with any provisions approved by the Minister as respects the loading in question other than rules made under this subsection.

F52[(4) If any person commits an offence under subsection (1) or (2), the person is liable—

(a) on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding €5,000, or

(b) on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding €100,000.]

(5) F53[…]

F54[(6) A surveyor of ships or a person authorised by the Minister in that behalf may for securing the observance of the requirements of this section—

(a) board a ship and inspect any grain found on it, and

(b) (i) ask the master of the ship or any member of the crew such questions or make such requests, and

(ii) inspect such documents,

relating to the grain and its storage.]

(7) In this section the expression “ grain ” includes wheat, maize, oats, rye, barley, rice, pulses and seeds, and the expression “ ship carrying a cargo of grain ” means a ship carrying a quantity of grain exceeding one-third of the ship's registered tonnage, reckoning one hundred cubic feet or two tons weight of grain as equivalent to one ton of registered tonnage.