Maritime

– Dunmore’s Potential

The distinctive and significant historic environment of Dunmore East is key to its generation as it contributes strongly to investment by attracting tourists and businesses, a sense of place and belonging, and sustainability in the reusage of local buildings and resources.

The regeneration of maritime areas encourages private-sector investment as the process creates an economic environment, which retains businesses and people by providing an incentive to stay, but also an incentive for others to relocate there. Adding to the resources of an area, rather than negatively labelling it as deprived, etc. builds confidence on both community and business levels.

 – Enterprise

The area has many positive attributes that allow for a growth in local enterprises. In Dunmore, there exists a strong co-operative network which can further benefit by extending these connections to development and investment agencies such as BIM, Leader, IDA, etc.

The strong presence of a highly-skilled workforce with an extensive range of available skills combined with valuable natural resources such as mariculture, food and tourism are amongst the area’s other advantages when undertaking the development of enterprise.

 – Employment

Under the regeneration programme, policies will be put in place to develop and create new sources of sustainable employment for the community. These policies will encourage effective management of grant-aid schemes and the administration of other development, investment and advisory reports which will serve to underwrite the sustainability of the local community through identifying and exploiting new development opportunities. The strategies will bring about an integrated approach so that each sector’s development will feed as much as possible into the others, employment begetting employment.

Our current services help support emerging employment opportunities by providing access to training; access to capacity building skills incentives; access to local, regional and international networking partners; and support with access to funding processes.

For example we have, in partnership with BIM, helped unemployed fishermen to retrain and further their skills to support their need to diversify into the offshore and wind energy industry.

We initiated our Turning the Tide project based on creating a new brand identity for Dunmore East Harbour and its regeneration, together with creating a brand identity for the new Marine Micro Enterprise Centre. The project was developed with the Waterford Institute of Technology’s CPA Department, within the B.A. (H) Design Programme and was funded by the European Commission and supported by a number of industry partners.

In other efforts to grow our network of support we initiated contact with Leader that lead to the formation of the Estuary Group, which is a network of FLAG Committees within the estuary. This is a first in the area’s history and both sides now actively work together to promote their shared aims and beliefs. The group was the driving force behind the vital community and environmental audit of the estuary.

– Sustainability

At the very core of all strategies will be the concept of sustainability, both in terms of environment and economy. The regeneration of the harbour area will create a long-term situation so that future generations in the area can continue to prosper. This undertaking will be essential for all development plans and will help in the regulation of all resources.

– People

Brendan Clody, 60, is a lifelong resident of Dunmore East. After leaving school he worked on all sizes of boat and at all types of fishing, working his way up to owning his own trawler, with which he fished for a number of years. However, with the introduction of new regulations governing safety and fish stocks, and the ensuing costs, Brendan decided to decommission his trawler.

In 2005, he bought an angling boat and entered the leisure tourism industry, offering an array of tourist trips including dolphin watching, eco-tourism and cruise ship viewing trips. Though his work remains, like commercial fishing, very weather dependent, he finds it less stressful and physically demanding.

Recent improvements at Dunmore East Harbour, such as the new passenger pontoons, have benefited Brendan’s business and he sees them as an encouraging move towards a brighter future for marine related tourism in Dunmore East.

Jim Griffin and Darryl Barry founded South East Seaweed in June 2013 with a vision to utilising the seaweed found in the south east of Ireland. Jim began foraging seaweed with his father at a very young age and has continued to do so as a leisure past time. South East Seaweed seemed a natural progression for Jim as he was so familiar with the natural resources in the area. Having spoken at length and researched the many health benefits of seaweed Jim and Darryl agreed to set up a local business. They are currently in the very early process of acquiring their foreshore license to harvest seaweed and have gone to considerable lengths designing their logo, branding and setting up a website.

They have also traveled to the other four seaweed companies in the west and north of Ireland gaining information on the huge vitamin, mineral and other health benefits of seaweed. They have received great help and support from the FLAG initiative in Dunmore East and are looking forward to working closely with the Dunmore East Harbour Regeneration Trust over the coming months to help make their business a reality.

– Things that we make and services we provide

Dunmore East Harbour Regeneration Trust care about the quality of our products and services. They say a lot about us. We handpick the very best natural ingredients for our seafood products. We know that our customers care about quality too, as can be seen in their generous remarks about the quality experienced in their reviews of our products. We know our customers also care about price. Each seafood product and service is competitively priced and packed with the goodness and quality you’d expect from our artisan fishing industry.

Products:

• Artisan seafoods
• Healthy seafood snacks – great additions to children’s lunchtime
• Festivals
• Christmas gifts and cards
• Clothes and accessories
• Activity packs for children
• Books, diaries and calenders

Services:

• Business incubation
• Mentoring
• Strategic foresight planning
• Marine eco innovation research/RND
• Community forum