Ms Niamh McCarthy:

The Minister met the CEO of Dublin Port, representatives of Belfast Harbour, the CEO of Tourism Ireland and the chairman of Cruise Ireland, who is also the commercial director of the Port of Cork. Some of these issues were discussed and the Minister promised to revert to those in attendance. As far as I am aware, that process is ongoing. I did not attend the meeting and am not aware of what occurred. That was the role of the chairman of Cruise Ireland in addition to his role at the Port of Cork. Apparently, they are still in discussions. I am unsure whether other ports have been contacted to see how they could help with freight. Obviously, we have connections in those ports and we have not heard of such inquiries being made. We need to stress the urgency of this matter. If we do not get it looked at now, it will be too late. I am in the port every day - I am known as the harbour queen - and I see the constraints and how busy it is. Nobody is denying that. We need cargo; we all avail of everything that is brought into the port. We understand that and nobody is questioning it. However, consideration should be given to how the cargo could be distributed to other ports such as Rosslare, Greenore and Drogheda rather than only Belfast and Cork. I acknowledge that Dublin Port is under significant constraints - I have seen the evidence of that, such as terminal 7 which will be used for Brexit inspections. Nobody has sat down with representatives of the other ports to see whether there is anything we can do.