Sir, – I read with interest the notion of moving beer from the brewery to the port by barge, as was done for decades (Letters, February 3rd). I remember the steam barges working on the river. One of them, the Killiney, lies sunk but intact in fresh water at Lough Neagh. It would be easy to raise and restore it back to service.
Imagine it with a glass roof for passengers in the cargo hold. It could run from the brewery to the lighthouses at the river mouth, working on the tide as they used to.
Gay Byrne’s father, who worked on the Killiney, said his biggest fear was being torpedoed at Capel Street bridge. – Yours, etc,
HARRY CROSBIE,
Dublin 2.
A chara, – Given the discussion about how Diageo will move goods to Dublin Port when Dublin City Council stops five-axle lorries traversing through the city’s core, might I suggest they make use of the fact St James’s Gate is situated adjacent to Heuston Station? The disused Platform 10 has a direct link to the port via the Phoenix Park tunnel and would present a very sustainable solution to the multinational’s concerns. Guinness used Irish Rail to transport their goods up until 2006 so it would be great to see this historic route to market reinstated. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN SMITH,
Cabra,
Dublin 7.
Sir, – In 2016, the De Halve Maan brewery in Bruges, Belgium, solved the problem of getting beer out of a busy city centre without clogging up the road network. In collaboration with the city, they built an underground pipeline to transport the product from their historic premises in the medieval town to a new greenfield bottling plant three kilometres away.
Rather than trying to sink the courageous new plans to finally give Dublin the civic spaces it deserves as a European capital, Guinness should apply similar thinking to the task of moving stout from St James’s Gate to Dublin Port. – Yours, etc,
STEPHEN SHAW,
Bülach,
Switzerland.
Sir, – A well-known Dutch brewing conglomerate has heavily invested in battery powered barges that are used to ferry huge amounts of beer, in bottles, cans and kegs, down the canals to the port of Amsterdam. Time for the Guinness fleet to be resurrected ? – Yours, etc,
GARETH SIMPSON,
Templeogue,
Dublin 6W.