By Andy Spearman
If it was an abandoned car it would have been towed away and scrapped years ago, but the Hebble Sand dredger has been rotting away for years and Drogheda Port are refusing to even talk to the local authority about it despite several invitations to do so.
It is not exactly clear when the Hebble Sand dredger first arrived at Drogheda Port for the final time but it was certainly moored at its current location during the 2014 Irish Maritime Festival.
Sadly, unlike all the other vessels that were in Drogheda for that festival, she never left Drogheda and the 757 tonne vessel has been left to rot ever since on the banks of the Boyne even though there have been many calls for it to be removed.
In 2022, in response to these calls, Councillor Kevin Callan got Louth County Council to communicate with Drogheda Port Company to ask that it be removed or at least to come and talk about it.
The Chief Executive of Drogheda Port, Paul Fleming, responded by saying he would convey the Council’s concerns to the vessel’s owner who he would not identify apart from that it was “a customer of the Port.”
Shortly after a communication from Louth County Council, in September 2022, the Hebble Sand mysteriously sank at its mooring and began spilling oil into the river Boyne.
Apart from surrounding the vessel with a pollution barrier whist it was made leak proof and re-floated, not much else was done and the vessel remained in situ. So the Council wrote to Mr. Fleming again asking him, or a representative of the Port, to attend the next meeting of the Borough District of Drogheda.
Nobody from the Port turned up however, so yet another invitation to meet with the Councillors was issued in mid-December 2023 following that month’s meeting at which great disappointment was expressed by councillors at the lack of action.
Sadly this invitation was ignored also and neither Mr. Fleming nor any other representative of the Drogheda Port Company was in attendance at the January 2024 meeting which took place last Monday.
