One hundred years ago, the construction of the hydropower electricity generating station at Ardnacrusha was in full swing.
Work had begun in the summer of 1925, and it was a truly massive undertaking in so many ways.
The Irish Free State was only in its infancy with its infrastructure in poor shape after the wanton destruction of the Civil War. State finances were perilously close to bankruptcy and the Bank of Ireland had come to its rescue.
But the Cumann na nGaedheal government was pioneering, and the availability of electricity was seen as an essential way forward for the fledgling new state to develop.
For a small country, the Irish Free State was about to box seriously above its weight.
Potential for power
Hydropower was not new to Ireland and there were many small schemes already in operation.
But a brilliant young engineer, Thomas McLaughlin, could see the potential for power in the mighty Shannon and a lot of the flow calculations had been compiled in the early 1900s.
Dr McLaughlin had worked with the German engineering colossus, Siemens Schuckert in Berlin in the early 1920s and he had vision.
Backed by Siemens, he managed to convince the government and in particular Minister for Industry and Commerce, Paddy McGilligan, of his plan and so the magnificent Shannon Scheme was born.
However, there were plenty of nay-sayers opposed to the scheme and especially awarding the contract to a German firm, just seven years after the end of World War I.
It was a truly massive engineering project, the likes of which had never been seen in Ireland before and or even still by today’s standards.
Siemens Bauunion was awarded the £5.2m contract – from a total state budget of just £25m for 1925.
The Shannon was to be canalised from Parteen weir to create the headrace to feed four huge 86-megawatt turbines.
This involved the excavation of nine million cubic metres of soil and rock.
To put this in context; it’s the same as digging four Croke Park pitches each to a depth of 150m.
You could tumble the new children’s hospital, MetroLink and the Galway bypass all into the hole.
Human cost was very high, and 33 men died on site and many others suffered horrible injuries
The facts are astounding. There were six 220t steam-powered excavators, 130 steam locomotives, 1,800 railway wagons running day and night on 100km of railway built for the purpose.
All 30,000t of plant was shipped from Germany into Limerick.
Add in 5,000 Irish workers on site (plus 800 Germans) who mixed 65,000t of raw cement with 13 mixers and shovelled 110,000t of coal.
But the human cost was very high, and 33 men died on site and many others suffered horrible injuries. Health and safety was not born yet.
In 1927, while work was progressing on the scheme, the government formed its first semi-state company to manage national electrification and that company was ESB.
Completely unlike today’s State projects, Ardnacrusha opened on time in July 1929 and came in just slightly over budget.
What can we learn?
At commissioning, the station was capable of powering the entire nation. Now power demand has increased so much that it supplies just 2% of our electricity usage today.
So, 100 years later what can we learn from this fascinating time?
Perhaps the most striking thing is the strength and power in good political leadership and what this can achieve.
We should learn from their resolve to build with world-class engineering even when money was very scarce. But the project was tightly controlled from a cost point of view.
Unlike today, nothing was squandered on endless consultants’ reports.
What do you think would supremos McLaughlin and McGilligan make of the bloated bureaucracy that is Irish Water and its plan to pump the Shannon’s water to Dublin?
