End finally in sight for Asgard restoration saga

THE restoration of the Asgard will have turned into a decade-long saga by the time it is finally completed.

Work is to begin later this year on the vessel, which Erskine Childers used to run guns for the Irish Volunteers in 1914, with a view to it being completed and ready for exhibition by 2009. That will be more than 10 years after restoration was first suggested.

In the late 1990s, the Asgard Restoration Project (ARP) applied for a licence to restore the boat, which was owned by the Defence Minister and had been in Kilmainham Jail since 1979. The ARP planned on refitting it for sailing. Critics argued that it should be in a museum rather than be made a seagoing vessel.