Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister should not worry as we will deal with that matter in Europe. He should park the issue as it will not be dealt with today. The extraordinary thing about what he said is that when I put to him the point that this national policy is based on the status quo in respect of Galway Port, which was restricted by a physical constraint in the harbour, he went all over the shop and started talking rubbish. He is clearly stating that it has been decided to maintain the status quo for Galway Harbour in respect of a physical feature that makes it impossible to accommodate a sizeable vessel in the harbour. This is a classic chicken and egg scenario. The Minister is not providing the port with a specific designation because it does not have sufficient traffic and he is not affording it an opportunity to attain the required level of traffic because it is restricted by a physical constraint.

Ministers must always be alert to the tendency, when State policy is being written, to conveniently arrive at the right answer by concentrating everything on the south and south east and leaving the west and north west coast denuded. This has been a continuous policy which, in fairness to brave people in the west, has been overcome. I referred previously, for instance, to Knock Airport, which was built despite rather than with the assistance of the Department the Minister heads. I remember in my previous role in Corr na Móna being told that there was not 30,000 tonnes of timber available for the timber mill in the village. The mill now handles more than 400,000 tonnes of timber per annum. Again, the status quoprevailed at the time. It was believed that a small mill would do no harm but, by God, nothing that far west would be allowed to grow. The community defeated the established thinking in State Departments.

I am intrigued with the Minister's clear declaration to the people of Galway that they are going to get this whether they want it or not and that he is not going to heed anybody west of the Shannon. I look forward to seeing his colleagues defend that thesis on the doorsteps of Galway in the forthcoming election. I can tell him that it is going to be a hard sell in Galway. Nobody in the west is going to accept this as a reasonable policy. They are not going to accept the kind of arrogance that is coming from the Minister's side of the table. If the Minister persists, he will find that the people will give their answer.