The €35 million upgrade of a stretch of the Ulster canal, from upper Lough Erne to Clones in Co Monaghan, will revive the art of canal building, a meeting was told yesterday.
John Martin, chief executive of Waterways Ireland, told the press conference yesterday that it may not be possible to follow the old canal's exact route and that new sections may have to be built.
Advertisements would be placed next month, he said, to seek consultants to begin work on the project, which is part of the capital works programme of the National Development Plan 2007-2013.
Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív announced that €75 million was to be spent on projects, including the restoration of the Ulster canal stretch to Clones.
By the end of the NDP, he said, Waterways Ireland would expect to have an extra 3,750 metres of moorings, 70km of new or improved waterways and a range of new services and facilities throughout the system.
Outlining the plan, the Minister said it involved the completion of the reopening of the Royal canal to boating traffic in 2009. This would involve building four road bridges, two of which were already completed, and the reconstruction of one of the canal's main locks.
He said that the canal would be reopened after flood relief work was completed at Spencer Dock and when the Luas was extended into the docklands and the new conference centre was built.
The work would cover investigations and extensions on the Shannon navigation from Lough Allen towards Dowra, the extension of navigation to Glasson, Co Westmeath, and completion of moorings at Ballina/Killaloe and Kilglass, Co Roscommon.
Brian D'Arcy, director of operations at Waterways Ireland, said that the Ulster canal project was very exciting and would become a regeneration catalyst for the area.
He said that the number of boats in the country had doubled since the first such scheme, the building of the Ballinamore canal, which linked the Shannon and Erne. At that stage, there were 5,000 craft in the island of Ireland. Now, he said, there were 7,000 in the Republic and 4,500 in Northern Ireland.
The Minister said that although he could not prove it, he would credit in part the reopening of the Erne/Shannon link in the 1990s to the halt in the decline of the population of Leitrim seen in the last census.