The latest issue of the [UK] Boat Museum Society‘s Waterways Journal, Violume 16, contains a very interesting article on “Concrete Boats and Barges” by the Rev David Long; several of the hulls are in Ireland. There are also articles on the restoration of a wooden coal-carrying Box Boat and on the carrying firm of Richard Abel & Sons of Runcorn and Liverpool, as well as a splendidly iconoclastic piece by Joseph Boughey on Robert Aickman, a founder of the [UK] Inland Waterways Association. [Non-hagiographic accounts of the history of the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland have yet to be written.]
It is not easy for folk without sterling bank accounts to buy copies of its Journal from the Boat Museum Society, but I have bought issues in the past from The Canal Shop [Vol 16 has not yet been listed at time of writing] and no doubt there are other sources too.
Irish waterways history 