An Irishwoman's Diary

Never write about the people or places that one loves, and avoid using the first person at all costs. That piece of advice conveyed by a colleague some years ago may seem a little outdated in this era of the endless "blog". . . but that's why one hates Nimmo's pier on Claddagh, Galway.

Unless one loves watching swans skidding across the water and the babbling rush over rocks as the Corrib embraces the Atlantic, one should forget about strolling along this stoic arm of rock. Alexander Nimmo, a Scottish engineer, built its seaward section as a breakwater and shelter for the Claddagh fishing fleet, a plaque at its foot tells the visitor. It was one of over 30 piers and harbours constructed by him during his time in Ireland from 1811 to 1832, it notes.

In fact, as historian Kathleen Villiers-Tuthill has discovered, Nimmo supervised the erection of over 40 piers along the west coast - along with 243 miles of road and a survey of two-thirds of the highly indented coastline. And there's more. Roundstone wouldn't have existed without him, and he went to extraordinary lengths, including leasing almost 240 acres of land at his own expense for rent, to ensure that a village became established on this part of the coastline.

The pressing need to tackle regional under-development - still a familiar refrain today, but at an alarming stage in the years before the Great Famine - influenced the engineer's approach to the west of Ireland. He was hired initially to conduct surveys for the Bog Commission in Kerry and Galway, and referred to himself as an "observing traveller" during many journeys.

In 1821, 10 years after his arrival, there was a partial failure of the potato crop, resulting in a famine in the south and west in 1822. Nimmo was central to the British government's response, in directing many of the subsequent public works which provided vital employment - and vital infrastructure.

Nimmo opened up the west in a way that had never been done before, Villiers-Tuthill says, with links to Erris, the Mullet peninsula, Achill in Mayo and Connemara. Where roads and piers met, villages developed. Landlords who had hitherto ignored their estates in the west began planning communities, markets mushroomed, fishing became an industry, along with fish curing, sailmaking and building boats.

Yet his efforts weren't immediately recognised, as she discovered, and he wasn't given adequate support. He died at work at the age of 49, when the authorities were trying to blame him - rather than weather and funding delays - for the failure of some of his roads and bridges. Villiers-Tuthill studied much of the evidence given by him to government inquiries and commissions, and concludes that he was a man of principle and ideas, who was "generally free of moralistic, racial or religious explanations" for economic and social conditions at a time when the "Catholic question" was being debated hotly.

The Galway Weekly Advertiser had no truck with his critics. "Eulogium is unnecessary, as the word 'Ireland' alone will be both his most merited monument and suitable epitaph," it said after his death. The "British empire has sustained an almost irreparable loss", it proclaimed. The full version, along with many of Nimmo's own reports and wonderful maps, can be found in Alexander Nimmo and the Western District, by Kathleen Villiers-Tuthill, published by Connemara Girl Publications at €25, hardback.

Joe Aston is a man familiar with many "Nimmo piers" along the west coast during his time as a fisherman.

When the Englishman first went to Donegal in the early 1970s, the fishing community was, he recalls, "thriving and optimistic", with a fleet of largely locally built boats catching fish for local markets and local factories on some of Europe's richest grounds.

Fast forward three decades, and former EU fisheries commissioner Emma Bonino's grim vision of fewer, larger vessels supplying trans-national markets is coming to pass. Many smaller Irish vessel-owners are finding it impossible to make ends meet - not helped by a Government which knows how corrupt and corrupting the EU Common Fisheries Policy is, and yet has turned its back.

"Is what we have seen in the fishing industry a good paradigm for what is likely to happen to the Celtic Tiger?", Aston wonders.

Now owner of a yacht Anna M which can be chartered for whale and dolphin watching, he has written a novel in which he tries to explore "the profound miasma in which our civilisation is floundering".

He has done so through the medium of characters who come upon a Utopian island named Pulawayo, after enduring a most terrifying storm on their boat. It is a riveting description, but one shouldn't spoil the plot. Wavedancing: A Story of Trouble Islanders is published by Trafford Press at £16.50 sterling, and more details are available from the writer on website www.gannetsway.com