Council applies for Royal Canal blueway funding

Westmeath County Council have applied for funding to develop a blueway on the Royal Canal.

Multi-activity recreational trails, such as greenways and blueways, have proved popular with tourists since being introduced in a number of locations across the country, including Leitrim and Mayo, and the local blueway would run from Mary Lynch’s in Coralstown to Coolnahay Harbour.

Speaking at the recent meeting of the Economic, Enterprise and Tourism Strategic Policy Committee, director of services Barry Kehoe revealed that the council had applied for €100,000 to begin preliminary work on a blueway in the Mullingar area.

As part of the its Action Plan for Rural Development, which was launched by the then Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Heather Humphreys in Moate in April, the government has pledged to provide additional funding for the development of “tourism assets” including blueways and to increase tourist numbers to rural Ireland by 12% by 2019.

Noting the success of blueways and greenways in attracting “slow speed tourists” to an area, Mr Kehoe said that people using the proposed blueway could possibly cycle one way and return by canoe, if the facilities were available.

Despite fears following the Brexit referendum that the tourism sector would be adversely affected, Mr Kehoe said that tourism numbers have continued to rise in Westmeath and across the country.

The rise in visitor number sis reflected in a recently published update on the Action Plan for Jobs: Midlands.

According to new figures from the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, 596,000 tourists visited the midlands in 2015, an increase of 7.7%, while the amount of revenue generated by tourism rose by 8.5%.

Most significantly for local economies, the number of people employed in tourism in the midlands rose by a third, from 3,000 in 2014 to 4,000 in 2015.