Mr. Barry O'Connell:

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach for his quite broad-ranging question. If I may, I will start with capacity. Effectively, that is the effectively the single biggest challenge we face. To respond to capacity, it is necessary to have an idea of what demand is. It is one of the questions the Minister raised with us a couple of months ago. As a result of that, we took the opportunity to go back and to reassess our demand forecasts. We wanted to have an objective assessment of what those demand forecasts were so we went to Indecon, which, as the committee will probably know, is a quite well-renowned econometric forecasting consultancy. We said to it a couple of things. First, we want to understand what drives our demand, to begin with. Two, we want to look at the latest long-term economic forecasts when we have an understanding of what drives demand. Then, last but not least, we want to overlay our capacity numbers based on how we expect that to progress over the coming years relative to our projects in order that we can see the extent to which we are meeting capacity or not. The first thing Indecon did was look at a very in-depth analysis of long-term historical data and come to the conclusion, not surprisingly, that there was a very strong correlation between growth and volumes in the port and GDP growth. The second thing it did was look at the latest available economic data. Central to that was the Department of Finance long-term finance projections, which were published in spring of 2022, and OECD long-term forecasts. It put that together and came up with a range of growth rates for GDP, in particular, plus a variety of other economic indicators. As a result, we had the correlation and had what the long-term forecasts were and then we overlaid our capacity plans. The upshot of all that is that the original assumptions we made in the master plan 2040 hold, as does our contention that we can deliver capacity as required by the economy to the point of 2040 and at that stage we will run out. Is that provable? It is not. It could be 2045 or it could be sooner. Indicatively, however, based on an objective assessment of our plans and on economic trends, that is where we would come out.

To get there, we need to deliver on our master plan, which is made up of three components, three major projects. The first is already completed. It is the deepening of berths and the strengthening of quay walls, allowing bigger ships from Europe, which was fortuitous when we see what happened with Brexit. The second is called MP2. It has literally just started. It will create additional berths for ro-ro and lo-lo on the south side of the port. The 3FM, the third and final master plan, is the one which is currently out for consultation. That is the development of the southern port. Again, everything is within the 265 ha we have available. We are not extending our footprint beyond that. It is utilising the lands we have available. The challenge at this point in time, then, is to secure planning for 3FM. That is vital because we will talk, I am sure, at some stage about the time it takes to plan major infrastructure in ports. Consider that Poolbeg is already a brownfield site. It has been designated for port purposes for a long time. Its neighbours are an incinerator, two power plants, a wastewater treatment plant, etc. Even at that, however, even given the fact that it is a brownfield site and its designation, it will still take close to 20 years from the original designs through planning through to completion. That is a very long timescale, and it is very important we begin now. As I said previously, one of the difficulties we have is focusing too much on 2040 and the big projects that have to happen without realising as well that we have pinch points within the port today. Our lo-lo capacity is under pressure and our ro-ro capacity is under pressure. Our ro-ro capacity is under pressure, as I mentioned earlier, because of lands allocated in the context of Brexit, which was done with the right intention at the time on the part of everybody concerned because nobody knew quite what was going to happen.