The MV Naomh Éanna, the former Aran Islands ferry and once CIÉ's only seafaring vessel, is to be scrapped.
The historic ship, which had lain partially capsized in a former graving dock in Dublin since January, is to be demolished following months of speculation around its future.
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“We could do no more,” said Sam Field Corbett of the Irish Ship and Barge Fabrication Company Limited, the ship’s owners.
The company purchased the vessel from its previous owners, the Irish Nautical Trust, for just €1 in 2015 with plans to restore the craft and use it as a business.
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However, Mr Corbett told The Irish Times in January his company did “not have the resources to do anything with the ship” due to problems securing financing for its future use.
Mr Corbett said several business cases had been made for the vessel. One plan was to turn the vessel in to a floating five-star hotel in the Dublin docklands. Another was to return it to the docks in Galway city and have it serve as a floating museum.
Difficulties in the planning process with Galway City Council halted the latter idea, along with funding issues.
Mr Corbett’s company had placed the vessel on blocks in the dock while it was still afloat and had tied it off to mooring points on land to prevent it moving, but these lines were cut by trespassers, allowing the vessel to float freely.
Richard Browne, director of contractors Cunningham Civil & Marine, described the condition of the ship as “poor to very poor” and that it was “beyond reasonable restoration” with “deep, deep corrosion” on the waterline.
The contractors began work on the site two weeks ago and the vessel was refloated on Thursday – after holes below the waterline were sealed by divers and the water was pumped out – to allow the scrapping process to begin from the top of the ship down to its hull after further assessments next week.
“One of the big challenges of the [demolition] project is to protect the graving dock and to protect the environment from the vessel,” Mr Browne said.
“The technical challenge is to keep the vessel upright and in place during the demolition ... that gets more difficult as we work our way down,” he added. “At some point we will lift out the remains with a crane.”
Mr Browne added that some smaller items from the craft, such as the name plates and anchors, would be preserved.
Built in 1958 as one of the last big ships to be completed in the Liffey Dockyards, the MV Naomh Éanna acted as a vital link for the communities on the Aran Islands for three decades, transporting everything from tourists to livestock between the islands and Galway city.
The nautical trust had initially preserved the vessel when its working life for CIÉ ended in the late 1980s and it served as a surf shop in Grand Canal Basin before being moved to its current location at a Ringsend graving dock in 2014.
The vessel’s condition continued to deteriorate and it suffered badly from vandalism over the intervening years.
