The Mullingar Advertiser discusses the Royal Canal water supply here. Some background info on this site here, here and here.
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They spend millions on reopening the Royal to navigation, then have to close it again because it uses too much water?! Couldn’t they install ‘back-pumping’ at the locks? Or are the locks not the main culprit? (Just how much navigation has there been on the re-opened Royal?)
Also, on a very practical note, if the main financial rationale for restoration is increased tourism: how on earth do they expect people to book cruising holidays if they can’t guarentee the canal will be open every time the sun shines?
They have been pumping from rivers and streams, but it has been very expensive and WI has had significant budget cuts. Governments seemed to like prestige capital projects but to be less keen on continuing funding, although in the recession the cuts were mainly to capital programmes.
To the best of my knowledge, there are only two boats for hire on the Royal apart from the recent arrival of a Locaboat (penichette) base at the western end. There are locally-owned boats in several places; I suspect that they go reasonably short distances most of the time. IWAI Dublin Branch has a record here of the numbers of boats engaged on the “Green & Silver” circuit and some boats have entered from the western end and gone some distance east without intending to go the whole way. WI does not publish figures for canal traffic (probably because they’re pathetically small).
bjg