Present Day
By the 1970s, the canal was falling into total disrepair and became a dumping ground for old cars and rubbish. Proposals that the inner Dublin part of the canal be converted to a motorway led to the local community forming an action group to encourage the Dublin City Council to clean and maintain the canal.
Today Waterways Ireland is responsible for the canal. The full canal between the Liffey in Dublin and the Shannon in Co. Longford reopened on 2 October 2010. Access points currently exist near Leixlip and at Maynooth, Enfield, Thomastown, Mullingar, Ballinea Bridge and Ballynacargy.
In 2006 a commemoration marker was erected at Piper's Boreen, Mullingar, to mark the 200 years since the canal reached Mullingar in 1806.
Read more about this topic: Royal Canal
Famous quotes containing the words present and/or day:
“When we leave our child in nursery school for the first time, it won’t be just our child’s feelings about separation that we will have to cope with, but our own feelings as well—from our present and from our past, parents are extra vulnerable to new tremors from old earthquakes.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“The arbitrary division of one’s life into weeks and days and hours seemed, on the whole, useless. There was but one day for the men, and that was pay day, and one for the women, and that was rent day. As for the children, every day was theirs, just as it should be in every corner of the world.”
—Alice Caldwell Rice (1870–1942)