Sailing: Ireland's largest single sporting arena is poised for greater control and regulation following a series of consultative initiatives that will spawn a single representative body within months. Dublin Bay has been identified as lacking overall direction for issues ranging from planning to facilities, balancing ecological and commercial issues and sports and leisure.
The latest conference last weekend ended with a call for the establishment of a statutory authority to co-ordinate the various interest groups. About 150 people took part in the session, organised by Ciarán Cuffe of the Green Party, though representation from the boating sector was barely visible.
"There are groups that have to get engaged at this stage, and awareness of the variety of users isn't necessarily complete," Cuffe told The Irish Times. "In hindsight, we maybe should have pushed harder to get the water users involved, or perhaps they didn't see the extent of the issues involved."
More than 2,000 residents in the zone around the bay were written to, as were the statutory agencies. Twenty sailing clubs and schools were included in an email invitation, though none attended.
The Dun Laoghaire Combined Clubs organisation was not included in the list, but the group's chairman, Phil Smith, requested and received an invitation to the event held in the Kingston Hotel last Saturday.
Smith has already attended two consultative meetings of the Dublin Regional Authority, the lead agency that began a forum that is now seeking funding to expand its role.
"To my mind, the Dublin Regional Authority is very inclusive between leisure, commercial, residents and ecological," Smith said yesterday.
According to Cuffe, an association of all the groups concerned about the bay's future is likely to emerge within the next year, and inclusion within the body is essential to ensure concerns are heard.
"I'd like to think that whether bathers, sailors or any other user group, they can all have improved facilities without any strong conflict between the groups," Cuffe said.
The Dun Laoghaire TD, who started sailing in an Optimist at age seven from the National Yacht Club, now holds a full yachtmaster certificate.
In contrast to similar meetings of even 10 years ago, there was no "yottie-bashing" last weekend, which may signify a change in attitudes towards private boat-ownership and marine-based sport.
The passing last week of Ireland's greatest maritime advocate also marked the change in times. While Dr John de Courcy Ireland was a vociferous opponent of socially elitist clubs and restrictive access to the sea, crucially his opposition never extended to criticism of the sport of sailing or involvement in pleasure boating.
Effective access to the sea requires awareness of the need for access, and as slipways and public launching venues either decay or are privatised, this could be a central platform for any engaged boating group included in the representative body in the making.
While Ireland has often been characterised as "standing with our backs to the sea", it could be argued that the clubs and boating groups around the bay area, in their pursuit of activities at sea, have effectively turned their backs to the wider community ashore by failing to engage with important local issues.
With close to 10,000 members, in addition thousands more non-members, guests and friends who take to the bay in all forms and sizes of craft, the opportunity to become involved "at the ground floor" of a significant development could slip from their grasp unless immediate action is taken.
