Re: Re: Limerick Docklands ~ Ted Russell Docks

@CologneMike wrote:

[…] proposals to move the port downriver have been circulating since 2005.

Actually, they’ve been circulating since the seventeenth century:

“For one observer [1675], Limerick’s port was too far inland for it to be one of the centres of the country’s general trade. Others [1746] stated that the port was difficult to navigate without local knowledge, while others complained of occasional adverse winds from the southwest that prevented ships sailing down the estuary to the sea. It was for this and other reasons that it was proposed in 1691 and 1781 to import and export goods from Tarbert, located further down the estuary [1781]. Baron Willes stated that adverse winds created additional expense for merchants, and concluded that this was the chief reason why Limerick was ‘not very great for foreign trade’ [1760].”

– from David Fleming “Limerick’s eighteenth-century economy” in Liam Irwin, Gearoid O Tuathaigh and Matthew Porter eds *Limerick: History and Society* Geography Publications, Dublin 2009. I have inserted the dates of the material cited in the footnotes instead of including the footnotes themselves.

My own view is that the floating dock should be turned into a marina.

bjg