The Shannon Hydroelectric Scheme: A Masterpiece in Infrastructure
Ireland’s recent infrastructure challenges have been much discussed and well documented. On the face of it, the significant financial commitments made by the state in recent years ought to represent a tremendous opportunity for the country. Yet, the mood of the nation oscillates between sceptical and cynical as storylines are dominated by the severe housing shortage, bureaucratic planning procedures, and any number of additional blockers big and small. In the recent words of Minister Jack Chambers, Ireland’s infrastructure delivery is in a “state of paralysis”.
How might we shift gears and produce a sense of ambitious momentum that could break through this malaise? There are lessons to be taken from the example of leadership demonstrated 100 years ago, when – in the midst of challenges that would make today’s obstacles appear trivial – perhaps the most ambitious and visionary infrastructure project in the history of the state was delivered. A masterpiece in engineering, leadership, and state-building: The Shannon Hydroelectric Scheme.
The context of 1925
It is impossible to appreciate the significance of the Shannon Scheme without some discussion of the world from which it emerged. Ireland’s economy was among the most underdeveloped in Europe. Overwhelmingly reliant on farming, food price drops in the aftermath of World War I left Irish men and women with little alternative but to emigrate in high numbers to escape poverty.
The institutions of the state – civil service, judicial system, security and policing – were still in development. The wounds of the Civil War that would take generations to heal were fresh. Externally, Ireland had little credibility internationally, and with limited diplomatic presence or economic partnership opportunities was still almost entirely dependent on Britain for investment and trade.
Electricity, though omnipresent in our lives today, was at the time a luxury largely confined to urban centres and supplied by small, local private operators. Only around 2% of Irish homes had electricity, and there was no guarantee that a poor, rural population would even use the new technology. The state had no national grid and no coherent energy policy; none of the institutions or technical skills required to develop and run the plant and distribution.
Financially constrained, institutionally immature, and lacking the infrastructure, experience, or even public belief needed to attempt a national-scale electrification project. Against this backdrop, the ambition to harness the River Shannon for hydroelectric power seemed less like strategic planning and more like science fiction. And yet, it was in this environment of uncertainty and constraint that a bold idea took hold.
An Audacious Vision: Why Not so in Ireland?
Irish chemist Sir Robert Kane was likely the first to properly scale the potential of the River Shannon for industry. Kane was commissioned by the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) to survey the country and identify practical ways to develop Ireland’s economy. His 1844 report, The Industrial Resources of Ireland, would be influential and widely read amongst both policymakers and nationalists promoting self-sufficiency. Kane’s own father had been involved in the 1798 rebellion; amidst the dry scientific measurements and analysis he made space to argue passionately for a vision of an Ireland thriving on its natural resources:
“It is first necessary to notice an objection to water power…expressed by a person who influences public opinion extensively in Ireland…This learned and eloquent individual had never seen a proper water wheel; had probably never been in a factory; had most certainly never looked at a report of a factory inspector; was too eager in the pursuit of an exalted professional destiny, to consult any merely mechanical person before rushing into public to declaim against the idea of our having any means of becoming industrious in Ireland.”
Kane, ‘The Industrial Resources of Ireland’, 1844
A variety of proposals to develop the Shannon were brought in the first decades of the 20th century. Local landowner objections, political instability, technical scepticism, and the significant cost of investment all resulted – to one degree or another – in the failure of all. It would ultimately fall to Dr. Thomas McLaughlin, a young Drogheda engineer, to develop the proposal that would find success. After emigrating to Berlin in 1922 to work for Siemens-Schuckert, he saw firsthand the success of hydroelectric projects in Germany. He dreamed of a similar future for Ireland:
“What impressed me most, probably, was the network supplying the province of Pomerania, a province with an area of about half that of our territory at home. Pomerania resembled our country in being almost entirely agricultural. An electricity network extended like a spider’s web all over the country, supplying 60 towns, 1,500 villages and rural areas, and close on 3,000 farms. To this area I went and studied for myself on the spot, always with the query in my mind – why not so in Ireland?”
McLaughlin, ‘How I Thought of the Shannon Scheme’, 1938
McLaughlin met directly with Ministers of State, first Patrick McGilligan – Minister for Industry and Commerce – and then WT Cosgrave – President of the Executive Council – to sell them on his dream. He gave technical lectures at the ICEI and RDS, gave interviews with newspapers to explain the significance of the scheme and respond to criticism, and worked closely with the Commission of Inquiry established to test the viability of the proposal.
Above all, he painted a picture that went beyond the massive investment in technical engineering that the project required. It was true that the Shannon Hydroelectric Scheme would be, in both scale and complexity, the most demanding project Siemens-Schuckert had ever undertaken. It was also true that such a vast investment was unprecedented for any country, let alone a small and newly independent one. What McLaughlin advocated above all else, however, was a nation-building endeavour announcing the Free State’s place on the international stage, and a demonstration that an independent Ireland possessed both the resources and the resolve to achieve the extraordinary.
Moral Courage
The success of Ardnacrusha required more than technical expertise and financial investment: it demanded moral courage. In moments where the right path was uncertain and the personal and political stakes high, leaders were called on to act with commitment and courage for the sake of a bigger purpose.
In the case of the Free State, moral courage meant risking political capital, public trust, and extremely scarce financial resources. WT Cosgrave and Patrick McGilligan were conservative men by disposition yet made the radical decision to back the project without any guarantee of success. They faced heavy opposition from critics who favoured smaller, safer investments – in particular, a more modest scheme to start on the Liffey and develop the rest of the country on an as-needed basis:
“I have on the Government’s guarantee embarked on two years’ work in the Liffey, and put certain moneys that represented hard savings into it. I say good-bye to that without any reluctance and without any tears if this scheme is proved to be a right and proper scheme for the country to adopt…But I am now claiming that we ought to have a more careful and fuller investigation of the Shannon than we have had.”
Figgis, Dáil Éireann debate on Hydro-Electric Exploitation of the Shannon, 2 Apr 1925
Though McGilligan, Cosgrave and others were persuaded of its importance, consensus was by no means unanimous. This extract from The Irish News is illustrative of the scepticism they would have encountered both in the Dáil and amongst the public:
“Mr John F O’Hanlon, the defeated Farmers’ candidate in the recent County Cavan election, has obviously but little liking for the Shannon Electric Scheme to which the Government has committed itself. “Half the amount”, he says, “spent on the development of agriculture would give fifty times the profit to the country and its citizens individually in five years than the Shannon Scheme could possibly yield in ten years”.”
The Irish News, April 15, 1925
For Siemens-Schuckert, moral courage took the form of a commercial and reputational gamble. Just a few years after World War I, the company accepted a high-profile contract in a politically fragile country, with a fixed price and significant technical risk. It did so under intense criticism- both from voices wary of foreign control and from British and Irish engineering firms who decried the lack of competitive tendering.
And yet, Siemens-Schuckert delivered. Indeed, Dr von Siemens made personal interventions throughout the programme to accelerate construction, committing substantial additional machinery and resources in demonstration of his commitment to the project’s success, even at the cost of financial loss to the company. This was not just business; it was an investment in the rebirth of two nations – Ireland and Weimar Germany.
“An arbitration board would … recognise the response of Dr von Siemens in May 1928 to the Ministers demand for expediting work… and I believe that no other contractor would have made such a gesture at that stage of construction, taking into consideration the financial losses to date, and the possibility of being relieved of any penalties by an arbitrator.”
Rishworth, Memorandum to Irish Free State, 17 October 1929.
Construction at Ardnacrusha began in August 1925, was completed – ahead of schedule – in July 1929, and formally opened by WT Cosgrave in November that same year. Over that period, the national interest generated by the project stimulated massive demand for electricity. As the project neared completion, pre-orders for electrical supply soared, towns prepared infrastructure in anticipation of being connected, and industries planned their conversion from steam to electricity. Previously viewed by many as a luxury for cities, electricity came to be seen as a cornerstone of national development.
Creating a Masterpiece
In Leadership as Masterpiece Creation, my colleague Charles Spinosa, with Matt Hancocks and Haridimos Tsoukas, lay out the basic steps for building a masterpiece. First, get embedded in a culture. Second, find a moral anomaly in the culture – what goes wrong all the time? Third, ask yourself what you’d love to do instead. Finally, take the risky action required to resolve the anomaly.
The leaders of the Shannon project understood the culture they were working in: conservative, rural, and economically stagnant, with deep social wounds left by recent conflict. They understood that the prevailing mindset of caution and dependence was not just a practical limitation – it was a moral anomaly, a failure of collective imagination.
They asked themselves a radical question: what would we love to do instead? McLaughlin’s posed this directly: why should a poor, agrarian nation not leap into modernity? Why not build a national grid, train a new class of engineers, and electrify the future? Why not so in Ireland?
To answer that question, they took risks, faced down critics, and entrusted their fragile state to a bold, controversial project. Siemens-Schuckert, against financial and political odds, recognised the opportunity beyond its commercial risks and committed itself fully to the endeavour. They all knew the project could fail – not just technically, but symbolically.
Instead, their actions resolved the anomaly. The Shannon Scheme did not just bring electricity; it changed how Ireland saw itself. It transformed public expectations about what the state could do, created an institutional foundation in the ESB, and embedded in the Irish psyche the idea that this small nation could achieve great things on the global stage.
“The development of our water power does put us in a position of independence and does give us a national task which has important reactions upon our psychology. I think it is true to say that the fact that we were able, so soon after the unfortunate civil war, to undertake the development of the Shannon Scheme had a good effect upon us all. We can all look back and take equal pride in the fact that there were some people who had the courage and the vision to tackle the project at that time.”
MacAntee, Minister for Industry and Commerce, 1940
Today, we face our own moral anomaly: a country rich in talent and wealth yet mired in delay and doubt. Housing, climate, energy, and infrastructure all cry out for bold solutions, not incremental ones.
We would do well to follow the same path laid out in the creation of the Shannon Scheme. Understand the culture. Name its failures. Ask what kind of country we would love to build. Then take the hard, necessary action to build it.
A century ago, Ireland electrified its future. It can do so again – not with cables and pylons, but with courage, purpose, and the will to create another masterpiece.
