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 day, present and/or day:
“The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“That the end is not far off since it will occur
In the present and this is the present.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“For certain minutes at the least
That crafty demon and that loud beast
That plague me day and night
Ran out of my sight;
Though I had long perned in the gyre,
Between my hatred and desire....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)