Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We have a rota of our 14 members, with each member moving up each time. I actually get the first slot this time, but I will be back to No. 14 next week.

I thank all the witnesses for their comprehensive opening statements, which contain a general thread of commonality. We are here to talk about long-term strategy and so everyone is talking about their future plans, infrastructure, spending quite a lot of money, planning for the future and looking at the current constraints. There has been much talk about rail. I will try to focus a bit more on Dublin because I am based in Dublin. Other members of the committee come from other areas and they will probably target the areas closest to them. I will try to touch on other things as well.

Dublin Port covers a very large area. Mr. O'Connell has said it has constraints and is quite small. Many of us living in Dublin do not really know much about it because it is not that visible. When driving around the place, one does not see much of it. I congratulate all the witnesses because we generally have people coming in here when there are problems, but they are not here for that reason. We probably do not hear that much about ports because they are just working successfully. Rosslare Europort has increased greatly since Brexit. All the ports are handling much more exports and imports. In everything we do as a small open economy we depend on our ports for a huge amount of our exports. Equally, many of the items we make need imports in the first place to finally make the exports. Without the ports, none of this happens. Equally, the Minister for Finance would not have to worry about how to spend all this corporation tax if the ports were not playing their part.

What are the challenges that we as members of the Oireachtas and ultimately the public need to know? There will be barriers and constraints. I know the Minister has expressed concern about Dublin Port's longer term strategy.

How would Mr. O'Connell respond to those concerns? Equally, what are the challenges we need to be aware of? Do they relate to funding, planning permission or MARA? Dublin Port has all these plans, but in ten or 15 years' time, what are the reasons they will succeed or what are the challenges that will stop them succeeding? What do we need to know to make sure the challenges are eliminated or reduced?