When Ua Ruairc and the Tellach-Eathach and Tellach-Dunchadha learned that Mag Uidhir was accompanied by only a small force, they gave him a hostile meeting.

[4] The next survey of the Woodford river was made in 1793 by William Chapman, who estimated that Garadice Lough could be reached for £5,000, from where he believed that a link to the Shannon should be possible.

Accordingly, William Mulvany carried out the next survey at their request, at a time when work had begun on the Ulster Canal, which would provide the link onwards to Lough Neagh.

There were also problems with millers and eel fisheries, and surprisingly for a scheme designed to provide employment, difficulty with finding sufficient numbers of labourers to carry out the work.

It soon became obvious that the original estimates were totally inadequate, and in 1852 there was an investigation into the Board of Works since they seemed unable to deliver any projects within budget.

Despite the stringency, towpaths were built on the canal sections at huge cost, even though the loughs made it impossible to use horsepower for much of the distance, and boats with steam engines were already working on the Shannon.

The Crighton Committee of Enquiry was set up in 1878 to investigate the performance of the Board of Works, and following their findings, the Monck commission looked at the issues of a route from Belfast to Limerick.

In 1887, the Cavan and Leitrim Railway arrived in the area and were sufficiently confident that the canal would not be used that they built low bridges over it, preventing navigation.

[13] In 1973 at the Sunningdale Conference, during a discussion on functions of the Council of Ireland, Leslie Morrell inserted the Waterway into the list of possible cross-border works.

Here things lay until 1988, when an engineering and feasibility study, funded by the International Fund for Ireland, examined the issues surrounding the reinstatement of the canal, which lay across the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.The NI Water Council, then being chaired by Leslie Morrell, gave enthusiastic support and gained the approval of the Direct Rule Administration for the proposal.

In order for the project to take place, the powers of the original trustees, which had passed to the local authorities along its route, were transferred to the Office of Public Works.

The locks are fully automatic, and are operated by the boat crews, using a smart card to activate the control panel, although they can only be used when waterways staff are working.

Once restored, the canal was renamed, becoming the Shannon–Erne Waterway, to reflect its purpose of linking the two river systems, and it was opened by Dick Spring, the Irish Foreign Minister and Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland at the time.

One unfortunate result of the scheme has been the invasion of the Erne system by the zebra mussel, a non-native species which travelled along the waterway from the Shannon.