There was one particularly eye-catching object moored in Kinvara's small harbour on Friday, the opening day of the 28th Cruinniú na mBád (the Gathering of the Boats) festival, and it was not a boat.
It was a large model of a house, atop a pontoon afloat in the middle of the harbour, brazenly advertising the fact that a new estate agency had just opened in Kinvara village.
The pontoon had appeared in the water only that morning. Festival organisers, including chairman Michael Brogan, admitted they had no prior knowledge that this prominent advertising object - which had the full attention of both fuming locals and visitors, as they waited on the quay for the arrival of the traditional hookers from Galway - was being put in the water.
Nor was the estate agency the official sponsor of the festival: that was CityJet, whose own signage at the festival was a modest presence on a harbour wall.
The floating advertisement didn't last the festival, being removed before the second day. But the fact it was ever there at all demonstrated the fact that nowhere and nothing in Ireland is now immune from the ever-present self-promotion of estate agents. It was nothing short of arrogance that a small local festival such as Cruinniú na mBád, whose sole purpose is to celebrate and fundraise for a traditional and endangered craft, was so shamelessly appropriated as a misguided advertising opportunity.
Seven hookers sailed this year from Galway to Kinvara, retracing the old route that the boats regularly took to carry turf from one side of the bay to the other in the early decades of the last century. The boats made a detour to Galway docks en route from Connemara. This was to highlight the fact that there are currently only two hookers in the Claddagh in Galway city.
Gaeltacht-based boats are eligible for 50 per cent refurbishment grants, but those in the Claddagh, an area long-associated with fishing, are not, as it is not officially a Gaeltacht area. Last week, Galway City Council gave the festival an assurance that grants would be forthcoming to all traditional hookers, no matter where they were moored: a development which festival chairman Michael Brogan welcomed. There are, he estimates, no more than 30 Galway hookers now in the water, and to continue to survive, they need all the support they can get.
On board Brogan's own hooker, The Mac Duaich, on this year's windless journey from Galway, was Páraic Breathnach, who will be presenting RTÉ Radio One's new arts show, The Eleventh Hour, from October. Breathnach, who recently co-organised Galway's alternative arts festival, Project 06, opened Cruinniú na mBád on the Friday evening.
Never a man shy of speaking his mind, Breathnach had plenty of strong words to say; both about Kinvara Harbour, where some of the few remaining Galway hookers are based, and about the shortcomings of various State bodies in helping to protect and preserve these traditional boats.
Kinvara harbour, he stated bluntly, is "a cess-pool": a reference to a long, acknowledged and ongoing problem of sewage pollution in what is touted in the guide books as one of Galway's prettiest harbours.
"The tourist boards all use pictures of the hookers in their advertising, yet the State does so little to actually help with funding of the boats or the environment they are moored in," he pointed out. The festival ended yesterday, but the controversy about the quality of the water in Kinvara harbour will continue.
