Cork City Councillor: ‘Convert naval ship to maritime museum’

GREEN Party councillor Oliver Moran has echoed calls for the navy’s former flagship to be converted into a maritime exhibition instead of being scrapped and has sought for the ship to be permanently moored in Cork City.

At a council meeting on Monday, Mr Moran tabled a motion requesting Cork City Council write to Defence Minister Micheál Martin, asking that his department would locate the LÉ Eithne in Cork City “as a permanent maritime exhibition showing the role of the Naval Service in protecting the marine and in the service of humanitarianism”.

Cork County Council and Dublin Port had also expressed interest in getting hold of the ship for this purpose.

Speaking at the council meeting, Mr Moran said efforts should be made to retain the vessel, which was decommissioned last summer along with the LÉ Orla and LÉ Ciara, as a museum ship.

“The LÉ Eithne has been decommissioned and a tender went out last month to seek for it to be recycled, however, I think a better use of it would be as a museum ship.

“Dublin Port and Cork County Council have already sought for this.

“I’m not sure what the response, or if they have received a response, but I thought that, given that it may be the last opportunity to do so before the ship is broken apart, that Cork City Council and Cork City should issue a request that it would be moored here as a museum ship,” he said.

LÉ Eithne was the last Naval Service ship built in Verolme dockyard at Rushbrooke and was once the flagship of the Irish Naval Service.

“It has a very illustrious history as demonstrating the breadth [of operations] that the Naval Service are engaged in,” Mr Moran said.

“I remember as a young boy visiting HMS Belfast in London, walking around it, learning about what the Naval Service in the United Kingdom do and I think, in the context particularly of the Port of Cork leaving the city docks, we have an opportunity in the city to moor a museum ship there and I think the LÉ Eithne would be a fantastic opportunity for that.”