Mr. Ciarán Aylward:

We looked at the benefits of intra-port competition in general. In Europe, there is a move towards a landlord-type model, which means there is public ownership and management of the port, with the operation of it licensed out to private operators. Ports such as Rotterdam, Antwerp and Bremen would have three or four different competing lo-lo terminal operators. In the research, not just in Europe but also in South America, that has been proved to reduce the cost of handling compared with having just one provider and where there was a lack of intra-port competition. There is considerable debate in Europe at the moment with changing directives in this area. There are certainly differences of opinion between the northern European view on this and the Mediterranean view, where there are stronger workers' unions which are reluctant to a move away from monopolies towards more intra-port competition. Overall, there is a move towards competing terminals.