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Great news for Moville businesses as Foyle Ferry saved

Posted Friday, February 5, 2010

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Foyle Ferry

The Foyle Ferry has been saved.

That's the great news for Moville's tourist trade.

The Ferry has carried an average of an astonishing 300,000 passengers a year since it started up 7 years ago.

If that had been cut off it would have been a death blow to Moville's businesses many of whom are just hanging on throughout this severe downturn.

Councils Chip In

Now Limavady Council and Donegal Council have agreed to chip in around a hundred grand each.

One has to say that it is an even bigger gesture by Limavady Council, as Limavady has a population of just 13,000 compared to Donegal's population of 250,000.

It is going to take 1.3% all the council rates extracted from the Limavady population.

It seems that the Unionists on the Limavady Council voted against it.

This is a one-off gesture, though, but it will tide the Ferry over so that it can go for an EU grant in 2011.

EU Policy

One presumes that the EU don't know the traditional policy in Northern Ireland of no spending north of the Bahn and the Irish Government's traditional policy of no spending on infrastructure in Inishowen.

Indeed it was revealed by Padraig MacLochlain in the Journal today that there were 1,740 Irish Development Agency visits in Inishowen last year and not one was in Inishowen.

Population

The population of Inishowen is 30,000.

The population of Ireland is 4 million.

Therefore, Inishowen takes up 0.75% of the Irish population.

So, if it was on a fair ratio basis of IDA investor visits, there should have been around thirteen Investor visits - and there were none.

What does that say?

At least the Foyle Ferry has been saved - but we had to do it on our own without help from the government - and with a massive and disproportionate financial boost from Limavady Council.