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Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 4 Jul 1967

Vol. 229 No. 9

Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Closure of Canal Sections.

3.

(Dublin) asked the Minister for Transport and Power if he will consider introducing legislation to enable closure of unused sections of canals, such as the unused section of the Grand Canal between Suir Road, Kilmainham and James's Street Harbour, Dublin.

I should explain in the first instance that under section 23 of the Transport Act, 1958, CIE are empowered to close to navigation any canal or part of a canal belonging to the Board which has not been used for public navigation for three years or more.

The whole of the Royal Canal has been closed to navigation since 1961.

CIE have informed me that no section of the Grand Canal is at present unused. The section of the canal between Suir Road, Kilmainham, and James's Street Harbour is used by pleasure boats as well as by CIE's own maintenance barges and weed cutting machines and is essential to enable craft to reach James's Street Harbour where dry docking and lying-up facilities are available.

Do I take it from the Minister's reply that he is not going to fill up the canals and that they will be preserved for the citizens of Dublin?

I have already explained to the House on previous occasions that this matter is awaiting a final reply from Dublin Corporation. In the meantime the Grand Canal cannot be closed as long as it is used for navigation, and then not for three years after.

Would the Minister agree with me there are other people in this country who have a legitimate interest in the fate of this and other stretches of the canal than CIE, and if CIE do not want to maintain it for their own particular purposes, may we assume the Minister, bearing in mind its amenity value both to the city and the rural areas through which it passes, will take appropriate measures to keep it in existence and in a reasonable state of maintenance?

The question of whether CIE would wish to maintain the canal or not does not enter into the picture because there would be alternative methods of maintaining the canal if it should be regarded as desirable that CIE should cease to have any control over it. As I have already explained, the position is that the canal cannot be closed without legislation; it cannot be closed until all navigation ceases, and then only after three years. The question of the future of the Dublin portion of the canal has been under consideration by Dublin Corporation for some time and as yet I have heard no result therefrom and no final decision.

No final decision to close it will be taken without reference to the Dáil?

That would require legislation.

Would the Minister ensure that regard is had to the different use and possibilities of the stretch of the canal from Inchicore to the sea and what is now rather a deadend, the section between Suir Road and James's Street Harbour which I doubt has been used by any craft at all in recent years?

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