Categories
General

Boating as a tourism activity

Proponents of the Ulster Canal Thon Sheugh like to tell us that this is a wonderful tourist attraction that will revitalise Clones and all other areas that the canal served.

Not only do I beg to differ (even the Cost Benefit Analysis of the “restoration” – which calculated a negative return – accepted that traffic on any restored navigation would be displaced from elsewhere in Ireland and not generate additional business overall), but it appears that boating activity on the one navigation in Ireland that should work for tourism (the River Shannon) is in decline.

Certain Leitrim county councillors are trying to blame this on fees charged by Waterways Ireland and are calling for the proposed fee increases that WI are seeking to be deferred.

From the Leitrim Observer (linked to above):

“The numbers have fallen from about 100,000 in the mid 1990s to 76,000 in 2004 and down to 36,000 in 2023. It looks like it’s going to dip under 30,000 this year,” explained Cllr Flynn.

https://www.leitrimobserver.ie/news/home/1557625/councillors-advocate-for-study-on-declining-traffic-on-river-shannon.html

If the premier boating resource in Ireland is seeing a natural decline in usage, what makes anyone think that a dead end canal to Clones will see sufficient activity to justify its restoration?

Categories
Locations

York Street Station, Belfast

The Slugger O Toole website has an interesting post about York Street Station in Belfast, asking a question that I also have, being why exactly did Translink feel the need to upgrade the station building?

Categories
Site Updates

The Ulster Canal

I was up in South Ulster yesterday and the day before, doing a quick photographic update of the bridges/locks of the Ulster Canal. I didn’t manage to complete this as getting beyond Caledon on 12th July wasn’t possible, due to a 12th day demonstration in Killylea. A shout out to the PSNI officers manning the road block at Caledon who were bemused by this Dubliner telling them he didn’t know where he was going but was following instructions from Google!*

I plan to add the photos of the Ulster Canal to the site shortly. In advance of having this update to the site ready, below is a photo I took near to the end of the canal at Wattlebridge, of a boat on a trailer adjacent to the canalbed. I genuinely hope that this is the closest to the Ulster Canal this boat gets.

Boat beside dry Ulster Canal at Wattlebridge, Co. Fermanagh

* The process I use in cases like this is I identify all sites I need to visit on a given day and download the latitude/longitude co-ordinates of these, in the right order, into a spreadsheet and copy/paste the co-ordinates in sequence into Googlemaps on my phone, to navigate from one to the other.

Categories
IH News 2024

Irish Lights 120 years of Fastnet Lighthouse

The Southern Star reports on Cork TD Michael Collins calling for an upcoming internal Irish Lights celebration of 120 years of Fastnet Lighthouse to be held in Cork and not Dublin, given that Cork is where Fastnet Lighthouse is.

Whilst I can see his argument (and as a Dubliner, I can see that this event does look like them up in Dublin not considering anything beyond the Pale), given that this is an internal Irish Lights event, staff would need to be compensated for travel to/from Cork. I would not consider such expenditure to be appropriate.

Of course, there is nothing to stop Cork County Council sponsoring an event to commemorate this milestone.

Categories
Events

Heritage Week 2024

Heritage Week 2024 takes place from 17th to 25th August 2024 inclusive.

I have created a page with all IH related events loaded to the Heritage Week website as of today, which can be accessed here (and also at the top of the page).

Categories
IH News 2024

Nama sells last Docklands interest

The Irish Independent reports that the National Asset Management Agency, the Sate body setup in the aftermath of the property price crash at the end of the Celtic Tiger, has disposed of its last Dublin Docklands interest – a leasehold interest on a property adjacent to the Grand Canal Dock. The buyer of this property is none other than the freehold owner – Waterways Ireland.

I fear that WI may be trying to follow the CIE model of being a property development company with the inconvenience of a linear transport network attached. Having said that, there is a fine site for house boats in Clones – I could see WI getting into the international protection accommodation market by setting up something similar to these on the marina in Clones.

The spending by the occupants would bring economic development to Clones – after all, wasn’t that the plan?

Categories
History

McArdles Brewery, Dundalk, Co. Louth

I am happy to link to this site, which is an effort to establish an online archive of historic material relating to the erstwhile McArdle’s brewery in Dundalk, Co. Louth.

Categories
General

Unfair dismissal for illegal drugs in Irish Rail van

It is not common for me to sympathise with Irish Rail, but in this case, they did everything right and fell foul of the incompetent Workplace Relations Commission.

RTE reports that an employee of Irish Rail was sacked after Gardai stopped the IR van he was driving and found illegal drugs therein.

An internal disciplinary tribunal in IR did not recommend the dismissal of the employee but IR proceeded to dismiss the employee anyway. For this, the employee was awarded €47,000.

I am aware that many WRC cases are overturned on appeal and in this case, I would support IR taking such an appeal.

Categories
IH News 2024

The Ulster Canal

Well, that was, underwhelming.

I paid a visit to Clones on Sunday to see this marvellous new canal, that is going to be the leading tourist attraction of South Ulster. The place was hopping with……

Well, not much really. Plenty of people walking, three water bikes for hire and a few canoes. Who’d have seen that coming.

I’ll have a full report soon (currently in Prague on holiday). However, a news article in the Anglo Celt caught my eye. It reports the CEO of Waterways Ireland, John McDonagh, stating that negotiations with landowners along the route of the canal between Clonfad and Castle Saunderson are taking place.

Are you stating, John, that you won’t have powers of Compulsory Purchase for this wonderful tourist attraction? Oh wait, no, the NI Government can see this as the white elephant that it is and sensibly won’t touch it with a bargepole.

Below is a Googlemaps view of Clonfad and the border:

Google hasn’t caught up with the new waterway yet. This ends in a field just at the border with Northern Ireland. The last section of the waterway is on a new alignment as there is a house in the way of the original alignment.

The thought struck me, that if the adjacent landowner(s) don’t want to play ball and either refuse to sell, or, better still, offers to sell, say, a 10m wide stretch of land running from the A3 ESE across the canal bed for 100m, to someone like me, the Ulster Canal is dead.

Categories
History

Fastnet Lighthouse 120 years

The Commissioners of Irish Lights, the statutory body responsible for lighthouses on the island of Ireland, has a page on their website about the Fastnet Lighthouse, noting thereon that the current light was first exhibited on 27 June 1904.