Mr. Des Whelan:

The Senator asked about the freight service from Ballina. We were very sorry to lose that service in 2018. It was not competitive compared with road transport. We had a number of meetings with Irish Rail about that. The prices at the time were among the highest in Europe. We are hopeful that we can agree a rate that will make that service viable. Waterford is one of only two ports in the country with direct rail access into the port. We see it as a big advantage to the business. We would like to get the business from Coca Cola back and we are hopeful about that.

The Port of Waterford is similar to Shannon Airport in that Dublin Port dominates our sector. We expect business to pick up with Brexit because we expect congestion in Dublin and on routes into and out of Dublin. We expect that some shipping lines will look south and north for their business. We hope to pick up a route or two in the coming year because of Brexit - deal or no deal.

We have plenty of capacity. Prior to the Bell Lines collapse 20 years ago, there were 25 container ship services into and out of the Port of Waterford. More recently we built up the bulk business substantially. We currently have three container ship services out of Waterford each week. We have plenty of capacity and we expect some business as a result of Brexit.

Regarding T10, we are preparing an application for some funding which will be submitted next year. As I said, we are reasonably confident about the future.