Mr. Paul Carey:

I agree that Galway Port has a significant role to play as a regional port for Connacht and the midlands. We can compete with the likes of Shannon Foynes, Cork and Dublin.

It would be fundamentally unwise to have a single port or even two handling the majority of the country’s petroleum imports. Cargo could get contaminated and contaminate the cargo in the other storage tanks. If an incident caused a terminal to shut down for even a short time, no fuel would be available in the country. The National Oil Reserves Agency's storage of fuel product in the event of an emergency could go to a new port.

Competing is difficult. We have trimmed our costs and are profitable. We will maintain that profitability. Our largest handicap is the fact that we are a gated port, in that we can only bring in ships at a certain time. The gates require a gateman to open and close them two hours in every 12, leading to overtime costs, etc.

If our plans are postponed, be it for planning or fund reasons, we will need a plan B. We have considered bringing larger tankers to Galway. The harbourmaster is working to maximise what we can bring into the port, bearing safety in mind at all times.

Instead of agreeing to the cost figures for the new port that were prepared by our design team, we decided to have the project peer-reviewed by external experts so that we might be satisfied with the first phase’s costs and that we are taking the port in the right direction.