Cruisers bypass Ballinasloe

BOATING enthusiasts have confirmed that larger Shannon pleasure craft are not visiting Ballinasloe because of fears about whether they will have sufficient clearance to get safely under a Bord naMona bridge near Reilly's Ford, about an hour downstream from the town.The single span concrete bridge structure is used to support a Bord na Mona railway system which transports peat from the nearby bogs, and is located over part of the River Suck which was made navigable as far as Ballinasloe eight years ago.However boating enthusiasts in Ballinasloe, backed up by the Chamber of Commerce, feel that the town is not benefitting sufficiently from the tourist spin-off which should have resulted from the opening up of the town to river Shannon pleasure craft. Despite the millions of euro that was spent on making the Suck channel navigable to Ballinasloe, and providing it with its very own marina within a stone's thow of the town centre, the general consensus is that the knock-on impact from a tourist point of view has been disappointing.Now the town's Chamber of Commerce has set up a subcommittee aimed at tackling the problems associated with the Bord na Mona bridge in the hope that the flow of boating traffic can be increased to the benefit of local business concerns.They are hoping to persuade Bord na Mona to raise the bridge further in order to increase headroom and allow the ever increasing number of larger pleasure craft to make their way to Ballinasloe, andare working alongside another group comprising representatives from the Town Council, Ireland West Tourism, Ballinasloe Area Community Development and RAPID, who are examining tourismdevelopment opportunities in the area.According to Chamber activist and boating enthusiast, Terry Noone, the number of boats passing through the lock at Poolboy was down almost a quarter last year on the figures achieved when theSuck was opened up to pleasure craft in 2001, and the indications for this year are not much better. “This is our eighth year and you would think we would have at least doubled on the numbers but instead we are in fact well down on the previous years.”Last summer's heavy rainfall and consequent rise in the level of the River Suck exacerbated the situation, and this year's current rainfall levels would appear to indicate a repetition of the problemsencountered by boat owners who failed to make it to Ballinasloe in the larger craft. "Our weather has changedyear the river was flooded," explained Terry Noone who quoted the example of one boat which hit the bridge that month and didn't realise the damage sustained to its flybridge until it reached the lock in Poolboy. Unable to make the return trip, the boat had tostay in Ballinasloe for two weeks until the levels of the river went down."We want to get people into Ballinasloe but the fact is that there were only two hire boats in the marina last night, and five the night before, and we are not benefitting as we should. What has happened is that boats have got bigger and are higher out of the water."Visitors hiring boats along the river Shannon are apparently being told not...and for the whole of July last