The Earl of Wessex's visit to Australia was embroiled in controversy yesterday after he suggested that the death of a Sydney schoolboy taking part in a Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme could help recruit more young people to the programme.

The 45-year-old prince, on a week-long trip to Australia to commemorate 50 years of the scheme in the Antipodes, told The Australian newspaper that it remains popular because it offers the possibility of serious danger and even death.

When asked to comment on the death of 17-year-old David Iredale, who died alone after becoming lost while walking in the Australian bush as part of his Duke of Edinburgh award, the Prince instead boasted (audio) about how the death of a young British participant in the early years of the programme had boosted its popularity.

"Suddenly the award, which was new... [its] reputation among young people was, 'Wow, this is serious. You could die doing this'," said the Prince who, at 22 attracted widespread opprobrium after resigning from the tough regime of the Marines.

Mr Iredale died of dehydration just metres from civilisation in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney in December 2006.

Recounting the death of the young British participant, Prince Edward said: "All the trustees were convinced that [the boy's death] was the end of it [the Duke of Edinburgh Award], that it would never go any further.

"And Lord Hunt, the man who masterminded the first successful ascent of Everest and was first director of the Award, said: 'No, no, no, do nothing ... Just wait and see.'''

Prince Edward said that that in the days after the death the number of inquiries from young people wanting to learn more about the award soared.

"And he [Lord Hunt] said, 'There you go, that's typical young people'," Prince Edward said.

"And the sense of adventure, the sense of excitement, that it gave you that sort of risk element — young people are like that still, that sense of adventure, the sense that it [death] is possible," he said.

"Obviously we don't want that to happen. Certainly it's not our intention, we give them the skills to go out there and do it safely and constructively."

"It was just that psychology, about what makes young people tick,'' Prince Edward added.

A coroner's inquiry this year into Mr Iredale’s death found that inadequate technology used by emergency services combined with unprofessional conduct by “uncaring and sarcastic” emergency operators, were primarily to blame for the failure to rescue the teenager before he died of dehydration after being without water for 18 hours.

The New South Wales deputy state coroner, Carl Milovanovich, also found that Mr Iredale's school did not administer the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme properly. However he recommended that the scheme review four key areas of its programme, including an update of its record books to specify that candidates must obtain pre-approval for each particular expedition.

Mr Iredale had become separated from two of his Sydney Grammar classmates while on an unsupervised three-day bushwalk in the Blue Mountains in December 2006 and was found dead eight days later. The boys, who had not told their school of their intentions, had believed that their bushwalk would go toward their Duke of Edinburgh award.

During the inquiry, the coroner read from harrowing transcripts of the young man’s increasingly desperate phone calls to emergency services whose operators responded by relentlessly urging him to give them a street address, rather than accepting that he was lost in bush-land.

At one point, as the dying teenager begged them for help, an operator said sarcastically: “You just wandered off into the middle of nowhere did you?”

Prince Edward's visit to Australia had been kept low key, with little media coverage. Australians are as a rule far more interested in the Danish Royal Family, whose Crown Princess Mary is Australian born.

However that is now likely to change.

Today, Mr Iredale’s mother, Mary Anne, refused to comment on Prince Edward’s remarks. But she criticised the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme for serious shortcomings.

"I don't think it's regulated well enough in Australia,'' Mrs Iredale said.

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