Money worries for Nomadic project

By Julian O'Neill
BBC Newsline reporter

The Nomadic is currently being restored in Belfast

The project to restore the Nomadic has received a £500,000 grant from the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, bringing the total pledged to £4m.

However, less than £8,000 has been raised from corporate donors and a 'Sponsor a rivet' delivered just £330.

Seven million pounds is needed to complete the restoration of the ship that was used to ferry passengers to the Titanic.

More than £2m of the £4m raised has come from the European Union.

The Nomadic currently sits in dry dock, awaiting repair and restoration.

Denis Rooney, chairman of the Nomadic Trust, the charity charged with delivering the project, said their finances were strong.

But at one stage they had been perilous and Mr Rooney had to risk his own money when he acted as guarantor on a bank overdraft facility.

"I was more than happy to do it, otherwise I wouldn't have done it," he said.

"I don't think it was an significant issue, nor was it an enduring issue which was more important. It was just a temporary issue at a point in time when we were trying to drive the project forward in the early days."

'No vision'

The hope is to have the Nomadic restored and ready for visitors for the 100th anniversary of its launch in 2011.

The former caretaker of the vessel, Rupert Keyzar, has claimed the Nomadic has been poorly looked after.

"There just seems to be no care, no passion, no vision," he said.

"And the neglect of the ship is merely one of the side effects of an organisation that genuinely has no passion for this ship."

The Nomadic Trust has rejected Mr Keyzar's claims.

It is also understood that the relationship between the Trust and the Nomadic Preservation Society, a support group of enthusiasts, is very strained.

There is an ownership dispute over a Nomadic lifeboat, one of the project's key artefacts, and the society has, so far, only given £470 to the trust from the many thousands of pounds it has raised for the Nomadic project.