Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 9 July 2024
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government
Waterways Ireland: Discussion.
3:00 pm
Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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Returning to that, I live in an area which has a lot of boats. The Shannon flows through it. There is a general consensus among people in the tourism sector, restaurateurs and people in the bars, even in the smallest villages along the area, that there is not the number of people using the boats as in the past and that the number of people is well down and that certainly in the last decade, there has been a marked decrease. I note that Mr. Rowe said boats on the Shannon have gone up from 6,000 to 9,000. What evidence is there of that? Is there anything we can stand over to show that? The boats we are talking about here are boats that people will stay on for a weekend or a few days. We are talking about cruisers. Those are the ones that are valuable to that sector. Those numbers do not seem to match the experience of people on the ground.