#NaomhÉanna – Marine restoration specialists Irish Ship & Barge Fabrication Co in co-operation with the Naomh Éanna Trust's Save Our Ship (SOS) campaign group are to present a €1.86m business plan today to Heritage Minister, Jimmy Deenihan.
As previously reported on Afloat.ie, the minister had called for a 'concrete business plan' and today's presentation of the business plan will be using private funds to restore Ireland's oldest surviving merchant vessel, the former Aran Islands passenger, freight and cattle-carrying ferry.
The group need the minister to intervene and halt the scrapping by Waterways Ireland of the Liffey Dockyard ship completed in 1958 as the reprieve date expires next Monday, 31 March.
The plan was prepared in only 4 weeks and proposes a number of commercial activities on board the Naomh Éanna after restoration: a 82-bed boutique hostel, a 46-seat restaurant, an interactive museum and a micro-brewery plus a café seating 60 people.
Galway Port Company have offered a berth for the restored Naomh Éanna in which CIE had operated the 137ft vessel on the three-hour service to the Aran Islands until 1988. She then sailed to Dublin Port and in the following year she was transferred to the Irish Nautical Trust and berthed in Grand Canal Basin.
The plan describes how the vessel could be repaired in a dry dock in Dublin. Engineers are confident the antique machinery in the ship can be returned to service and the ship will return to her home city under her own steam.
