Mr Robin Swann, the Ulster Unionist Party Assemblyman for North Antrim and Stormont Public Accounts Committee Chair, said the constituency’s business and tourist community could be greatly boosted if the region had its own maritime historical and cultural centre.
Assemblyman Swann, the North Antrim UUP Chairman and UUP Chief Whip, said the constituency needed to ‘cash in’ on projects which commemorated the famous, but ill-fated, Titanic liner.
Mrs Swann said: “North Antrim is one of a number of Northern Ireland constituencies fortunate enough to have the coast as part of its boundary. In this respect, this is why the Stormont Executive needs to support my campaign to develop a North Antrim-based maritime historical and cultural heritage.
“With a new multi-million pound visitors’ centre at the Giant’s Causeway, the time is now right to tie in this project with a North Antrim maritime museum which could also form part of ongoing Titanic commemorations.
“During his time in the Assembly, my predecessor Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE had the privilege of visiting Halifax in Canada with the Assembly Commission and had the moving opportunity to lay a pose of flowers on the grave of the unknown baby who perished in the Titanic tragedy in 1912 and who is buried in a cemetery in Halifax.
“If such a maritime museum was incorporated into the visitors’ centre at the Giant’s Causeway, one of its first sections could be a tribute and commemoration to those who died on that tragic night almost a century ago,” said Assemblyman Swann.
