The Ulster Canal (recently renamed the Clones Sheugh but now known as Saunderson’s Sheugh) seems to have led to an increase in emigration. Working on its construction reclaimed many from “those habits of reckless indifference and that passion for ardent spirits which are so fatal to the happiness of the working classes in Ireland”:
With the power of saving out of their wages, the habit [of saving] has arisen. The whiskey-shop has been abandoned, and several among those who were first employed, have laid by sufficient money to enable them to emigrate to the United States and to Canada, where they have constituted themselves proprietors, and have before them the certainty of future comfort and independence.
G R Porter The Progress of the Nation in its various social and economical relations, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present time Sections III and IV Interchange, and Revenue and Expenditure: Charles Knight and Co, London 1838
Those who suggested more recently that restoration would provide employment in local pubs and eateries obviously hadn’t learned from experience. I presume that, to this day, the inhabitants of Monaghan and Fermanagh still won’t touch a drop of whiskey.
Irish waterways history 