Flotillas of boats, waterborne parades in Dublin city and the annual Dublin Boat Rally are all in doubt this year after Irish Rail said it was unable to lift a bridge to allow boats to enter the city from the Royal Canal.
The Inland Waterways Association of Ireland’s (IWAI Big Cruise includes a range of activities on the Grand and Royal canals as boats make their way to the capital for the Dublin Rally. Parades of boats on the Liffey and activities in the Grand Canal Basin were also planned.
Many of the participants and members of the association have been planning the cruise for more than a year.
However, a flotilla of some 20 boats, which left the Shannon in Co Longford on April 4th, is currently stopped at Confey, near Leixlip on the Dublin-Kildare border, after boaters learned the Newcomen Bridge, in Dublin’s north Docklands, has closed until further notice.
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Kay Baxter, outgoing president of the association, said the flotilla had stopped, rather than press ahead through a lengthy series of locks and bridges, leading up to the Dublin bridge, where they would have to turn and come back.
The news was a big blow, she said, to many boaters who were planning to attend the Dublin rally. Some participants had even bought boats to take part while others were planning to recreate the Green and Silver account by Tom Rolt of a voyage through Ireland’s inland waterways published in 1949. It was one of the last trips by any boat around the triangular loop of the Shannon, Grand Canal and Royal Canal, before the Royal closed to navigation until 2010.
Ms Baxter said Irish Rail controls the Newcomen lifting bridge and opening dates are published early in the year. In recent years, the number of bridge lifts has reduced to six. In 2024, the final lift in August did not happen because of mechanical failure – a feature which contributed to the popular name of the bridge among boaters, “The Effin bridge”.
“The knock-on effect extends to the IWAI Dublin Rally, the annual trip up the Liffey on May 17th and the parade of boats in the Dublin Basin,” she said.
Similarly, a group of boats from Clontarf Yacht club had to cancel their plans to travel down the Royal Canal to the river Shannon and return by the Grand Canal.
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Irish Rail said it regretted “that a fault with the Newcomen Lifting Bridge has impacted on the IWAI’s upcoming events”.
A spokesman said, however, the IWAI’s characterisation of the circumstances was “inaccurate and unfair”.
He said: “The final lift of the bridge last August was postponed due to what was understood to be an electrical fault with the bridge. Irish Rail undertook works to replace the key electrical components within the following week, in readiness for the 2025 programme.
“A fortnight ago, we undertook the first of the bridge lifts in 2025 for IWAI, during which the motor for the gear crank failed, resulting in the bridge being stuck in the upright position. It is our view now that this was the original fault, which it transpires was intermittent in nature. The fault two weeks ago did delay trains for a time until the bridge was lowered.”
The spokesman concluded that Irish Rail hoped “to be in position to facilitate bridge lifts later in the season”.
