Mr. Barry O'Connell:

I thank the Senator for her question. The relocation of Dublin Port has been much debated for quite a long time. I am relatively new to this role but I think I get the question at least once every second day. In November 2020, the port published an extensive set of papers looking at the question of the location of the port. It looked at it from the point of view of the implications of relocating the port of Dublin to another site on the eastern seaboard and in the absence of that happening, it also looked at what would happen with what we call the development of Dublin Port 1.5. That is where our current position is, that we would develop Dublin Port to its maximum capacity and we would now start planning for that incremental capacity in the years ahead.

The findings of the papers were based on a detailed assessment of the implications economically, and from a time perspective, of relocating the port. Again, I have to draw attention to the fact that it is not just a question of relocating the port. It is also relocating the infrastructure which supports the port, such as the Dublin Port tunnel and the M50, away from the centre of population, namely, Dublin, the largest centre of population in the country, and the impact that would have for our competitiveness. The conclusion of our analysis at least was that a project of that scale would be a mega-project which is likely to take 20 to 30 years plus, assuming that a suitable location could be found on the eastern seaboard. There are very practical considerations when looking at that, at the scale of Dublin Port.

Dublin Port is where it is because of a number of reasons, but initially the port was formed because it is at the mouth of the biggest river on the east coast. That creates deep waters. This was followed by the gradual construction of the Great South Wall and the North Bull Wall, and those waters became as deep as 7.8 m, and even more over the proceeding years. That is critically important, because it enabled larger ships to be able to deposit into the mouth of the river, and consequently the population of Dublin grew out and around that. We still have the deepest ports on the eastern seaboard. Through dredging, we continue to deepen them to a depth of around 10 m, and again that allows larger ships to access from Europe.

As we also have significant oil reserves on both sides, north and south, relocating the port and finding an equivalent area in the eastern seaboard would be a massive infrastructural project. You would have to deepen waters, and put in significant breakwaters to be able to accommodate ro-ro and lo-lo. Then there is the question of Natura 2000 sites, for example. If you look at a map of Ireland and the Natura 2000 sites on the east coast, there is a heavy proliferation all the way down that coast.

The planning around putting a structure as big as Dublin Port in there would come up against significant obstacles and would take a significant amount of time.

That is a short summary of a complex issue but it is why Dublin Port came to the conclusion that the best strategy for the country was to maximise capacity through the existing port. We do not look to extend its footprint any more. Thereafter, we look to develop more capacity on the eastern seaboard. That is the rationale behind that. I will return to the repurposing of lands, which the Senator also mentioned in her question, specifically around housing. I am conscious that we are still out for consultation on the project. Part of that consultation is obviously the Minister's comments as well. We deserve to go back to the Minister and formally respond to those comments as well. We will do that at the end of this month. I will generalise, as opposed to giving a specific answer for the time being. As we look at this challenge, referring to what I said earlier, strategy is about choices. What informs the choices we are making? That is the point. We went back to first principles and looked at the Harbours Act. We looked at various policies. The mandate we assumed from that was to enable international trade through the creation of port capacity. That is the primary purpose. It does not mention other activities, which of course have value, but the mandate is to enable capacity.

That is not to say we do not look at the issue; of course we do. The Minister mentioned three parcels of land in particular. We have offered one of those pieces of land up already to the Land Development Authority, LDA. That went to local council for a vote on rezoning. That was overturned on the basis that the site was not deemed fit for housing rezoning because of its proximity to the port tunnel. There is another piece of land, which is currently acting as refrigerated storage on the east point. The other piece of land in the middle is the car compound, which is closer again to the opening of the port. That car compound will clear 100,000 vehicles this year. Many of those are electric vehicles, which are in support of the national climate action plan to reduce carbon. Relocating those 100,000 cars somewhere else, given the logistics of how this works, is extremely challenging to put it mildly. Recently a vessel came in with 3,000 vehicles. It took three days to off-load the vehicles because there is a convoy of professional drivers, who will travel ten at a time a couple of hundred metres within the confines of the port to the car compound. They do that over the course of three days. The cars are stored there for a couple of days and are then cleared by customs. The car transporters then come in, and the vast majority of vehicles are distributed around the greater Leinster area. Moving that land somewhere else has a massive impact on that particular industry, which again is supporting some of our national climate action plan goals.

That is not to suggest we do not have a critical role to play when it comes to the question of housing. I think we do. We recently looked at some data with some of our engineering consultants. We were interested to find out that if you are building a new three-bedroom house for example, depending on the specification, between 60% and 80% of the value of raw materials going into the construction of that house are imported. As you look at our housing plan for the coming decade and beyond we are going to need to import a significant amount of materials, before we ever get to speak about furnishings, to enable the construction of those properties. I think we have an important role to play in the housing debate. It may not be in a traditional way, but it is an important one.

The Senator's final question was on the timing of planning. At this point, the assumptions we made relating to the master plan, particularly around demand capacity, are as valid now as they were several years ago. That is recent. As I said in my opening statement, we spend time and resources to go outside and get an objective opinion. Given the time it takes to go through the whole sequence, including planning all the way through to construction, it will still be 2035 or 2036 before we finish the 3FM project. At this stage we do not see an interruption in the timing of the plan.