Tag Archives: Waterways Ireland

New guide to Shannon and Erne

Posted on Friday 29 August 2014 | Leave a comment

In German. Bit of a coup for Sven and Anita, I think. Hawthorn‘s bow appears in one photo.

Some of Ireland’s competitors on this and the next two pages.

Archives workshop: a reminder

Posted on Monday 25 August 2014 | 1 comment

I mentioned, back in April, that an interesting-looking workshop is scheduled for Belfast on 8 September 2014. It’s being held in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland [PRONI] in the Titanic Quarter and there’s an optional extra tour and reception on the SS Nomadic afterwards. This post is a reminder.

The programme covers waterways, roads, railways and flight. For this site, the opening session is of great interest: Dawn Livingstone, CEO of Waterways Ireland, is to talk about an interactive archive for Waterways Ireland.

By air, sea and land

The workshop is being organised for PRONI by A²SN, the Archives and Artefacts Study Network, supported by the Historical Model Railway Society, the Business Archives Council and the Postal History Society.

The [two-page PDF] brochure is downloadable here PRONI transport archives workshop. The workshop fee is £20/€25 with an extra £3/€3.50 for the SS Nomadic visit. Sterling cheques are accepted; there is provision for paying in euro by online banking.

1 Comment

Posted in Ashore, Built heritage, Canals, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Operations, People, Rail, Restoration and rebuilding, Shannon, shannon estuary, Sources, Steamers, The cattle trade, Tourism, Ulster Canal, Unbuilt canals, waterways, Waterways management

Tagged archives, belfast, Ireland, PRONI, waterways, Waterways Ireland

Did you know …

Posted on Sunday 17 August 2014 | Leave a comment

… that Pollboy Lock, on the River Suck, can be filled in one minute and fifty-eight seconds?

Pollboy

Loos change as TippCoCo hopes to swipe the loot

Posted on Wednesday 23 July 2014 | 1 comment

Er … sorry about the outbreak of headlineitis: it’s corresponding with journalists that does it.

The Tipperary Star reports (on paper, not on its website) that Tipperary County Council intends to issue “swipe cards for boating facilities along Lough Derg”. Michael Hayes, the engineer for Nenagh Municipal District Council, said that the cards were sold along the Shannon but that the revenue went to Waterways Ireland whereas the council bore all the costs. He is quoted as saying that “We are pursuing it to have them pay some of the costs”: another threat to WI’s budget.

Councillor Phyll Bugler said that it was “not acceptable” that shower and toilet blocks closed early, although she is not reported to have commented on the cost of having staff to clean the blocks late at night.

I suspect that Waterways Ireland’s income from the smart cards is minimal.

1 Comment

Posted in Ashore, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Irish waterways general, Operations, People, Politics, Shannon, Tourism, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

Tagged block, boats, county council, Ireland, Lough Derg, Nenagh, Operations, Shannon, shower, smart card, Tipperary, toilet, vessels, waterways, Waterways Ireland

Saving canals

Posted on Tuesday 22 July 2014 | 4 comments

Barrow Line 1

Barrow Line 2

Barrow Line 3

Barrow Line 4

When I get a moment, I must find out how many boats have been down that way in this warm, sunny July, the peak of the holiday season. The warmth will have encouraged the vegetation, but I suspect relatively few boats have been through. And only two boats entered the Royal through Dublin in July, even though two openings were offered.

Apart from giving artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative about the value of the canal tourist industry and the abiding love of boaters for the canal, using canals helps to keep the weed down.

4 Comments

Posted in Built heritage, Canals, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Natural heritage, Operations, People, Politics, Tourism, waterways, Waterways management, Weather

Tagged barge, Barrow, Barrow Line, boats, bridge, canal, Dublin, Grand Canal, growth, Ireland, Operations, Royal Canal, traffic, waterways, Waterways Ireland, weed

Effin mensuration

Posted on Tuesday 22 July 2014 | 5 comments

Statue of Dr Johnson near his birthplace in Lichfield

The learned readers of this site will not need to be reminded of the sapient advice of the late Dr Samuel Johnson:

[…] no man should travel unprovided with instruments for taking heights and distances.

There is yet another cause of errour not always easily surmounted, though more dangerous to the veracity of itinerary narratives, than imperfect mensuration. An observer deeply impressed by any remarkable spectacle, does not suppose, that the traces will soon vanish from his mind, and having commonly no great convenience for writing, defers the description to a time of more leisure, and better accommodation. […]

To this dilatory notation must be imputed the false relations of travellers, where there is no imaginable motive to deceive.

Samuel Johnson A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland W Strahan and T Cadell 1775

The good doctor would, I think, have welcomed the invention of the digital camera with inbuild chronometer. Equipped with just such a device I arrived yesterday at the first lock on the Royal Canal to witness the lifting of the railway bridge and the passage thereunder of fleets of boats. I thought it would be interesting to record how long each stage took.

I have written before about this bridge: reporting a question by Maureen O’Sullivan TD in October 2013 and another in November 2013 and providing statistics on usage a few days later:

only 58 boats went through in 2013
the bridge was lifted on seven dates
two other scheduled lifts were cancelled as no boats wanted to travel
Irish Rail charged Waterways Ireland €1200 per weekday lift and €2000 per weekend lift.

The first 45 minutes

A lift scheduled for early July 2014 was cancelled; yesterday’s lift catered for just two boats, whose passage was assisted or monitored by eight Irish Rail staff and four from Waterways Ireland. Four of the Irish Rail people may have been in training as others seemed to be demonstrating things to them, but that’s only a guess. Three of the WI staff travelled together in WI’s stealth van and operated the first lock; the other, who travelled separately in a 4WD vehicle, visited from time to time. As far as I could see there was no contact between the Irish Rail and WI teams.

The bridge was scheduled to be lifted by 1100.

Before the lift: 0945. The lifting bridge is on the right of the photo

One minute later: 0946. A separate group of workers, perhaps contractors, is going down the west side of Spencer Dock with equipment

Four men still on the bridge 0949

Two minutes later

On the bridge 0956

Still there 0958

One minute later

The bridge 1006

The bridge 1012

The bridge 1015: another person approaches

Six men at the bridge at 1020

A seventh man approaches at 1028

Preparing to lift

The preparation stage, presumably involving the unlocking of some mechanism, took about five minutes altogether.

One man worked on the far end while another walked to do the same at the near end

An eighth man, behind the fence on the right, seemed to summon two of the men on the bridge

They went to this building, which I guess houses the controls for the bridge

Meanwhile work continued on the bridge itself

Almost done

A final check

Everybody was off the bridge by 1033

Lifting

The lift itself took just over nine minutes; the bridge was up before 1044, in good time for the arrival of the boats.

After about one minute

Another minute later

Another minute (or so)

About four minutes have elapsed

After five minutes. The sides are clear of the water in which they usually rest; they are dripping on to the canal below

Six minutes in

Seven minutes

The men behind the fence may be controlling the lift

Not much further to go

Eight minutes

It’s up

One of the jacks

Side view (taken after the boats had gone through)

Water under the bridge

Boats go through

It took just over three minutes for the two boats to go under the bridge.

Cruiser approaches; steel boat visible through the bridge

Cruiser about to enter

Heads down

Half way through

Leaving

Out

Steel boat entering

Almost through

Looking ahead to the lock

Done

I did not record the lowering of the bridge, which I presume took much the same time as the raising.

Preparation 5 minutes, lifting 9 minutes, passage 3 minutes, lowering and locking say another 14 minutes: say 45 minutes altogether, allowing some margin. But a large number of boats would take much longer as the rate at which they could move on from the bridge would be limited by the time taken to work through the lock.

5 Comments

Posted in Built heritage, Canals, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Non-waterway, Operations, People, Politics, Rail, Restoration and rebuilding, Safety, Sources, Tourism, Uncategorized, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

Tagged Alice O, barge, boats, bridge, canal, Dublin, Effin Bridge, Iarnrod Eireann, Ireland, Irish Rail, lock, Newcomen Bridge, Operations, Royal Canal, vessels, Waterways Ireland

The buoys of the lough

Posted on Saturday 19 July 2014 | 2 comments

Waterways Ireland’s proposed new moorings on Lough Erne. Note that the links at the bottom of the page [which do not include this or this] are to PDFs.

The “heaviest cruisers”, eh? Hmph. And “egress” is not the mot juste. But let us not carp: perhaps the idea will, in time, be applied on some southron waterways too.

2 Comments

Posted in Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Natural heritage, Operations, Safety, Scenery, Sources, Tourism, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

Tagged boats, buoy, Erne, Ireland, mooring, Operations, vessels, waterways, Waterways Ireland

The best-value CEO

Posted on Friday 11 July 2014 | 1 comment

Mary Lou McDonald [SF, Dublin Central] asked Jimmy Deenihan [FG, Kerry North/West Limerick], before his departure from the waterways (and other stuff) department,

… if he will provide in tabular form a list of the annual salaries of the chief executive officers of all non-commercial State sponsored bodies under his remit.

Which he did; you can see it here.

I thought it might be interesting to see how the salaries of the CEOs relate to the numbers of staff and the budgets they control. It’s not easy to compare them. The salary figures are presumably current; the various bodies offer, on their websites, accounts for years ending anywhere from 31 December 2011 to [well done, the National Concert Hall] 31 December 2013. In some cases I could find no proper accounts, but at least the Crawford Art Gallery gave a figure for its income, which is more than the Chester Beatty Library did [as far as I could see].

There were several other minor difficulties, but the big problem is that some bodies distribute grants to others, so their business is processing money: as a result, their income (usually from, or mostly from, the state) is higher than it would be for non-grant-distributing bodies. I have made no attempt to allow for that.

To make comparisons easier, I divided the number of staff in each body by the CEO’s salary (converted to euro where necessary) and multiplied the result by 1000 to remove leading zeroes. That tells you how many employees you get managed for each euro of CEO salary. Waterways Ireland is by far the biggest organisation, but has the second-lowest CEO salary.

Similarly, I divided the organisation’s income by the CEO’s salary to provide a crude measure of how much activity you get for each euro of CEO salary. Bodies dispensing grants look better than they otherwise might using this measure.

This is then a very crude comparison, with many caveats, but I think that Dawn Livingstone of Waterways Ireland is the best-value CEO of those running bodies under the aegis of the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

Organisation	Staff	Budget (m)	CEO salary	Staff X 1000/salary	Budget/salary
Arts Council	48[1]	€63.9[2]	€85,750	0.56	745.19
Chester Beatty Library	37[3]	?[4]	€90,591	0.41	?
Crawford Art Gallery	15	€1.1[5]	€72,124	0.21	15.25
Foras na Gaeilge	64[6]	€21.5[7]	€113,429	0.56	189.55
Heritage Council	18[8]	€7.8[9]	€113,123	0.16	68.95
Irish Film Board	15[10]	€20.2[11]	€97,981	0.15	206.16
Irish Museum of Modern Art	83[12]	€8.3[13]	€85,720	0.97	96.83
National Concert Hall	103[14]	€4.6[15]	€101,056	1.02	45.52
National Gallery of Ireland	117[16]	€9.5[17]	€93,297	1.25	101.83
National Library of Ireland	93[18]	€9.5[19]	€81,080	1.15	117.17
National Museum of Ireland	176[20]	€17.6[21]	€96,148	1.83	183.05
Údarás na Gaeltachta	86[22]	€40.2[23]	€126,200	0.68	318.54
Ulster-Scots Agency	20[24]	€3.4[25]	€61,997[26]	0.32	54.81
Waterways Ireland	328[27]	€41.0[28]	€77,071[29]	4.26	531.98

I’m sorry the table spreads so far to the right; I can’t work out how to narrow the column widths.

[1] 41 full time and 7 part time WTEs, according to note 2c to accounts in Arts Council Annual Report 2012

[2] Total income y/e 31 December 2012 from Arts Council Annual Report 2012. €56.6m was dispensed to other bodies in grants

[3] Excluding volunteers and vacant posts shown in the Staff List in Report of the Trustees Chester Beatty Library 2012

[4] The annual report for 2012 available here http://www.cbl.ie/About-Us/The-Chester-Beatty-Library/Reports.aspx does not include accounts. There is a one-page balance sheet, without the associated notes, from which I am unable to form any idea of the cost of the institution

[5] I am unable to find any accounts on the Crawford Art Gallery’s website http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/aboutus1.html. Its Annual report 2011, the most recent available, says “The Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism pay allocation to the Gallery for 2011 was €475,000, while the non-pay allocation was €600,000. The capital allocation for 2011 was €275,000.” I have used the (rounded) sum of the first two figures

[6] Staff Costs and Board Remuneration in Foras na Gaeilge section of The North/South Language Body Annual Report and Accounts for 2011

[7] Total income y/e 31 December 2011 from Foras na Gaeilge section of The North/South Language Body Annual Report and Accounts for 2011

[8] Heritage Council website www.heritagecouncil.ie

[9] Total income y/e 31 December 2013 from Heritage Council Annual Report for 2012

[10] Note 6 to accounts in Annual Report 2011

[11] Sum of total income figures from Capital Income and Expenditure Account and Administration Income and Expenditure Account y/e 31 December 2011 in Annual Report 2011

[12] Note 9 to accounts in Irish Museum of Modern Art Annual Report 2011

[13] Total income y/e 31 December 2011 from Irish Museum of Modern Art Annual Report 2011

[14] Note 2 to accounts in National Concert Hall Annual Report 2013

[15] Gross income y/e 31 December 2013 from National Concert Hall Annual Report 2013

[16] Note 7 to accounts in National Gallery of Ireland Annual Report 2012

[17] Total income y/e 31 December 2012 from National Gallery of Ireland Annual Report 2012

[18] Rounded. From Human resource management and development in National Library of Ireland Annual Report 2011

[19] Total income y/e 31 December 2011 from National Library of Ireland Annual Report 2011

[20] Note 13 to accounts in The National Museum of Ireland Financial Statements for 2011

[21] Total income y/e 31 December 2011 from The National Museum of Ireland Financial Statements for 2011

[22] Údarás na Gaeltachta Annual Report and Accounts 2012

[23] Total income y/e 31 December 2012 from Údarás na Gaeltachta Annual Report and Accounts 2012

[24] Staff Costs and Board Members in Tha Boord O Ulster-Scotch section of The North/South Language Body Annual Report and Accounts for 2011

[25] Total income y/e 31 December 2011 from Tha Boord O Ulster-Scotch section of The North/South Language Body Annual Report and Accounts for 2011

[26] £49,244

[27] Excluding student placements and temporary and agency staff (total 19). Note 4 to accounts in Waterways Ireland Annual Report and Accounts 2012

[28] Total income y/e 31 December 2013 from Waterways Ireland Annual Report and Accounts 2012

1 Comment

Posted in Built heritage, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Foreign parts, Ireland, Operations, People, Politics, Sources, Waterways management

Tagged budget, comparison, Dawn Livingstone, department of arts heritage and the gaeltacht, Dublin, income, Ireland, Operations, salary, staff, Waterways Ireland

All sheugh up

Posted on Friday 11 July 2014 | 1 comment

Heather Humphreys [FG, Cavan-Monaghan] is to be Minister for Waterways (as well as arts and heritage).

That’s Heather Humphreys, who asked her predecessor as minister three questions about the Clones Sheugh (some of which would be in Monaghan):

21 July 2011: To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if €35 million was ring-fenced for the restoration of the section of the Ulster Canal between Clones and Upper Lough Erne; if this funding was included in any budget between 2008 and 2010; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

30 January 2013: To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if he will provide an update on progress on the Ulster Canal Project; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

6 March 2014: To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if he will provide an update on the progress of the Ulster canal project; the work carried out to date by the interagency group which was set up to examine possible funding options; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

How could a Fine Gael minister hold back the tide of Shinners in Cavan-Monaghan? Not, I hope, by wasting public money on porkbarrel projects.

1 Comment

Posted in Canals, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Foreign parts, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Non-waterway, People, Politics, Restoration and rebuilding, Ulster Canal, waterways, Waterways management

Tagged boats, bridge, canal, Clones, department of arts heritage and the gaeltacht, Dublin, Erne, Heather Humphreys, Ireland, Lough Neagh, Ulster Canal, waterways, Waterways Ireland

Temps

Posted on Friday 11 July 2014 | Leave a comment

Waterways Ireland has no staff on temporary contracts but has 32 on seasonal contracts.

Tag Archives: Waterways Ireland

New guide to Shannon and Erne

Archives workshop: a reminder

Did you know …

Loos change as TippCoCo hopes to swipe the loot

Saving canals

Effin mensuration

The first 45 minutes

Preparing to lift

Lifting

Boats go through

The buoys of the lough

The best-value CEO

All sheugh up

Temps

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boats

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Industrial heritage

Inland waterways

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