Can it be that there are two sane politicians on the island of Ireland? If so, that would be the highest number since Morpeth and Mulgrave.
Down here in the Free State we have the Sainted Leo Varadkar [KH, I see]; Oop North, where it’s grim, they have Basil McCrea [BRA] of NI21. Basil has another Written Question for Carál Ní Chuilín, NI Minister for Waterways Ireland [and Lambeg drumming, according to some of her fellow-MLAs]. Basil’s question is:
To ask the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure whether her Department is considering the introduction of an annual fee for boat users to fund and improve boating infrastructure.
The only problem with that is that — at least for the Waterways Ireland navigations — the fee is needed not to improve the infrastructure but to keep the lights on, get the equipment repaired and buy basic consumables. It seems to me that boat-owners either don’t know or don’t care how bad the financial situation is. I presume that the owners who are helping themselves to free moorings around Lough Derg are in the don’t-care category.
Barbara Lewis Solow, in The Land Question and the Irish Economy 1870–1903 [Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts 1971], shows that the problem with Irish agriculture in the late nineteenth century was that rents were too low and there were not enough evictions. Much the same could be said of Irish waterways: charges are pretty well non-existent and even such few rules as there are are widely ignored.
In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
What Waterways Ireland and the Irish waterways need, fast, is a new set of strict byelaws, with significant user charges and strict enforcement mechanisms, preferably empowering the tax authorities to seize income and property.
The ministers should stop faffing around and get on with it.
Irish waterways history 