I was really worried today. Yesterday was the deadline for Craggy Island, the Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs, to respond to my Freedom of Information Request for info on funding of the Clones (formerly Ulster) Canal, the insane project being pushed by Craggy Island. So I expected the response in today’s post.
I have been maintaining that Craggy Island hasn’t got the money and doesn’t know where it’s going to get it. But if they granted my FOI request, and showed funding streams providing lots of lovely lolly going into a hole in the ground over the next several years, I’d look a bit of an idiot. It wouldn’t take much to shut me up, though: just a tiny bit of evidence (a memo from the Department of Finance, say, or a budget or projected cashflow) that the money was available.
So imagine my joy when I got a four-page letter, an eight-page schedule of documents (showing, for most of them, why I couldn’t see them) and a pile of miscellaneous crap –ministerial speeches and suchlike — that I was allowed to see.
My faith is reinforced. They haven’t got the money. But I’m going to help, by appealing the decision and thus contributing even more to the departmental coffers.
Irish waterways history 