The owners of the Fastnet Line ferry service between Cork and Wales yesterday pledged to try and revive the service after the company was forced into receivership when it failed to secure a €1.6 million rescue package.

Interim examiner Michael McAteer had been appointed last November to run the Fastnet Line but yesterday lawyers for Mr McAteer informed the High Court that he had been unable to source additional funding to allow the company to continue trading in line with its business plan. Mr Justice Peter Kelly was told that Mr McAteer was no longer in a position to put together a scheme of arrangement with the firm’s creditors that would allow the company to continue to trade as a going concern.

As a result, the ferry service, which had been suspended since the company went into examinership last November but which it had been hoped would recommence in March, will not now resume sailings, with the loss of seven permanent and 71 contract jobs.

However, Noel Murphy, chairman of West Cork Tourism Co-op Society Ltd, which owns Fastnet Lines, yesterday said the co-op would begin looking at ways of reviving the service as it provides a vital tourist link between Cork and Kerry and south Wales.