Newry Canal Regeneration Project Gets New Life as Councils Join Forces

The restoration of Newry Canal for tourism and recreational purposes is once again to the fore in an ambitious project that combines the support of Newry, Mourne and Down District Council and Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council.

A joint Working Group has been set up with the aim of putting the regeneration of the historic waterway up front and centre. The two councils both met for the first time last Monday 10 November and it's the first major initiative since the late 1990's when an application for Millennium Lottery funding was made, but failed when they couldn't secure match funding in the allotted time frame. It is also planned to bring other government departments and connected organisations on board as well. 

Newry Canal was opened in 1742 and is the oldest summit level canal in Ireland. Newry and Mourne District Council bought the Newry Ship Canal and the section of the Newry Canal within its jurisdiction for the benefit of the community for just two pounds in 1974.

Take a defibrillator to the canal

The setting up of the working group follows two Newry Canal motions brought forward in November 2024 and April 2025 by Newry City councillor Killian Feehan who speaks of the need "to take a defibrillator to the canal and get a bit of life back into it"

Cllr Feehan who has been elected Joint Chair of the group along with Cllr Lavelle McIlwrath, ABC said: " One of the issues that I had previously was that everybody seemed to be responsible for a part of it, but nobody seemed to be responsible for all of the canal. I  know how these things work, If you are content to be sent from pillar to post, you'll get no further than that, so the thinking behind pulling everybody in together was to take everyone who was responsible for part of it, and put them around the same table and saying as a collective - now we have responsibility for all of it!"

The remit of the working group not only includes Newry Canal but also the seaward Newry Ship Canal taking in the Albert Basin. Basically that's the entire length of the waterway, all the way from Victoria Lock to Portadown.

If talking regenerated the canal it would have been done 20 years ago!

Cllr Feehan's reasons for pushing the Canal project are many. "This month is my two year anniversary on the Council, and this feels like one of the most significant milestones on the canal journey so far. If talking regenerated the canal it would have been done 20 years ago."

He added: "It's important to people in Newry. As long as I've been alive, I know it to be a source of pride. The canal carries Newry's history on its shoulders. It runs through the middle of the city. It's not been utilised in the way that it should and people in Newry deserve to have it enhanced and for it to be treated with the pride and respect that it deserves."

There's also enormous potential for places along the canal like Scarva, Poyntzpass and Jerrettspass to be hubs of activity too. "There's no limit on the ambition that I have for the canal. I want to see it take its place with the prestigious waterway across Ireland, and Britain of which there are many. We're asking Waterways Ireland to come in and have a discussion with us before Christmas. We want to put a bit of urgency on that, because they're widely respected as an organisation" said Cllr Feehan.

ABC Council have invested significantly in lock repairs, something that our council haven't been so good at in the past. For the inland canal to have any recreational uses, lock repairs are vital.  Currently Newry, Mourne and Down District Council are forwarding an £180,000 repair at Forsythes lock, although there's another five or six that are needing urgent attention.

Personal Vision

As regards Cllr Feehan's personal vision he said "The vision that I have would touch on recreation, tourism, biodiversity. They would be the three pillars of it. I've worked through the council in conjunction with Inland Waterways to get sign off for an inland canoe trail earlier this year, to be able to see it utilised for rowing and canoes, for stand up paddle boarding, for small vessels and barges. Within that as well, though I think it is admittedly longer term, a recognition or a celebration of Newry's maritime history. Whether that's a celebration in the context of a festival, whether there's a permanent monument. In terms of a Maritime Museum that was actually part of a proposal that I had put into the Belfast Region City Deal people for a maritime quarter in Newry and part of that was for a maritime museum as well. I don't want to limit my vision to anything." Unfortunately the proposal by Cllr Feehan to use the city deal money from the failed gondola proposal in the Mournes for the Canal was not taken forward.

Cllr Feehan and Cllr Helena Young have previously worked together in conversations with Birmingham City Council and Bolton to discover their own canal journeys and gain best practice.

Cllr Feehan said "A lot of the feedback that we got from those meetings was that the asset we have in Newry is more impressive than the baseline that they had whenever they started." he said. Newry, Mourne and Down District Council have been asked to put together a paper, scoping out the full scale of works that needs done on their end of the canal in terms of restoration. Conversations at Birmingham and Bolton have indicated  that it would take 25 to 30 years for a really aspirational vision to be totally realised.

"I'm not interested in rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I don't want itty bitty bits done. From my perspective and I can only obviously speak from my personal perspective. I want the the grande vision, I want the bells and whistles. Even if I wasn't a Councillor,  if I was just a person living in Newry -  I look at that canal every day, I just see so much untapped potential in it. So I want that to be the focus of this group."

He added "I want to see a really assertive vision. I wouldn't be prepared to accept watered down alternatives. I think from the soundings that we're getting from other political parties, they're up for something bold as well.

"For my part, I won't be willing to accept mediocrity when it comes to the canal. It's taken a lot of work to get us here. It shouldn't have taken a lot of work to get us to this point, but it has done and I'm not going to waste it with, symbolic gestures or photo opportunities or things like that. I want to see it properly utilised, and I want to see its potential fully realised."

Fixed Bridge

Speaking on what could be seen as the elephant in the room Cllr Feehan sees the proposed fixed bridge over Newry Ship Canal as a risk. "I think it would be very short sighted and counterproductive. What myself and Cllr Doire Finn have already done at council is we've got support for council to adopt a position in opposition to a fixed bridge. Previously, and it might only sound like a subtle distinction, but previously, council expressed a preference for a lifting bridge, and Doire and I were able to harden that position into one that rejects the fixed bridge."

He and party members met with former Infrastructure Minister John O'Dowd but found him dismissive of exploring alternatives to a  fixed bridge. "But then, obviously that changed, John O'Dowd left and Liz Kimmons was rotated into Infrastructure. And my instinctive thought around that was that hope was rekindled a bit, for no other reason, than you have a Newry woman that's making a consequential decision about the future. So we fed into the consultation. The SDLP have lobbied DFI, I know the Alliance Party are on the same page. I know that Sinn Fein locally are on the same page"

"I am very cognizant of the big question mark over the fixed bridge when it comes to the efforts to revitalise the canal, because I think it would be a massive own-goal if a Newry Minister signed off on a project that basically clipped the wings of elected reps in Newry trying to make something of the canal, it would be extremely frustrating. So I live in hope, but we wait in anticipation." added Cllr Feehan.

He would love to see a marina in Newry at the Albert Basin but is cautious of highlighting that because of the above. "At the same time, do I want to get people hyped up for that and put all the chips down there whenever it might be made moot or redundant by a decision by DfI?"

Newry Park - Hub of the City

The big gamechanger for the Albert Basin will be the park and he sees it as the epicentre of activity in the city. "When we talk about recreation, stand up paddle boarding, canoeing, rowing, even a Maritime Museum, all of that seems much more plausible whenever you factor in the park as well, because all of a sudden that's the hub of the city. I see the park as complementary to the efforts around the canal. So you could view, in many ways, the revitalisation of the canal, that project as a phase two, a natural follow-on from the Albert Basin park."

Funding

Cllr Feehan's gut feeling around funding is If you knock on enough doors, one of them's going to open. The Shared Island unit have already expressed an interest in funding a business case for the cross-council project. In a BBC Your Place and Mine broadcast in 2008, John Douglas a Tourism Councillor with Banbridge Council said he would like to see the whole canal opened up, and suggested in the region of £20 million would be needed at that stage. It's unknown how much it would cost currently.

He added "That was at the core of one of my proposals before the council. Cast the net out wide, get talking with every single funding body that we have access to, whether it's the Shared Island Unit, UK Shared Prosperity Fund, SEUPB, literally every funding stream that council has access to should be contacted and engaged. I think it would be very unlikely that you'll get one funding body that would come in and say, here's a blank cheque, we're going to do it all for you, but look to the success of the Ulster Canal regeneration project. This isn't without precedent this is a work in progress for the Ulster Canal,  therefore it would follow, to me that a project around Newry Canal would be viable as well in terms of accessing funding."

The Group

The Working Group consists of eight councillors. From Newry, Mourne and Down: Killian Feehan, SDLP; Helena Young, Alliance; Aidan Mathers, Sinn Féin and Glyn Hanna, DUP. From ABC: Lavelle McIlrath, DUP; Tim McClelland, DUP; Sarah Duffy, Sinn Fein and Jude Mallon, Sinn Fein.