Chris Cathcart from the Carrybridge RNLI Station, meeting and greeting the Duke of Kent.
ON HIS visit to Fermanagh the Duke of Kent, who is the President of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) yesterday officially opened its first permanent inland lifeboat station at Carrybridge. The station has been fully operational on Upper Lough Erne since March this year.
The lifeboat station is the RNLI’s first specially built inland waterways buildings.
The opening comes 13 years after the station was first established on Upper Lough Erne. During those years, Enniskillen RNLI’s 40-strong volunteer lifeboat crew were housed in temporary accommodation.
The local community contributed £60,000 towards the cost.
Among the platform party were Anna and George Johnston who will hand over the boathouse into the care of the RNLI via David Delamer, the chairman of the RNLI Council for Ireland.
And, Tom Bailey, Lifeboat Operations Manager at Carrybridge accepted the new building on behalf of Enniskillen RNLI.
The platform party also included such well-known faces as Sam McCreery, the president of Enniskillen RNLI, Archie Birrell, the chairman of the Lough Erne Fund-raising Group, and Darren Byers, RNLI Divisional Operations Manager for Northern Ireland.
The Service of Dedication was led by three of the leaders of the four main churches locally, Reverend Kenneth Hall, Dean of St Macartin’s Cathedral, Reverend TH Samuel McGuffin, the Methodist Church Darling Street and Monsignor Peter O’Reilly, St Michael’s Church, Enniskillen.
The work was carried out by Omagh-based Woodvale Construction.
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