This increase is unjustified, unaffordable and puts all households at immediate risk of displacement. The raise in fees for this liveaboard community can only be seen as the gentrification of Grand Canal Dock Marina with immediate risk to a community established over a decade ago. Waterways Ireland is a state body and service provider funded by the taxpayer. Their actions are comparable to a priva
te developer not a custodian of the
Irish Waterways. We recognise the need for a revision of the bye-laws and fee structures. This needs to be done with a fair and robust fees matrix. This has not been demonstrated in either draft of the bye-laws. As suggested at the Oireachtas Housing Committee Meeting (21/09/2023) and by WI (25/10/2023), we submitted a rigorous fees analysis document to Waterways Ireland (attached her for you). This has not been considered by WI. Instead, a commercially focussed report carried out by KPMG, which is not based on any clear fee structure, remains the single justification for the proposed fees in GCD. As well as the immediate displacement of our community, allowing this raise in fees to be written into the bye-laws allows for a precedence of unreasonable and unjustified
fees for boaters on our waterways across the country. We call on you the Oireachtas Committee on housing to ask Minister Noonan motion to reject these bye laws until the rights of residential houseboat communities are protected, families are not displaced and a fair fees structure is in place.
