Dr. Cecil Beamish:

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine took over responsibility for this site by way of Government decision in 2011. Most of the expenditure reported by the Comptroller and Auditor General predates that. It deals with demolition of the steelworks and other works that were carried out before that transfer.

The transfer initially involved a focus on the east tip, a 9 ha site where there had been extensive dumping of waste on the foreshore from approximately the 1960s and 1970s on. That had to be regularised in order to meet the requirements of a judgment by the European Court of Justice dealing with the site. The Department was given responsibility for taking it over and regularising it. In subsequent Government decisions it was also given responsibility for the former steelworks site and another area known as the south tip, both of which are outside the decision of the European Court of Justice.

Since then the Department has collated all the existing information on the east tip site, carried out a detailed quantitative risk assessment of the east tip site and was engaged in designing appropriate outline remediation plan for that site. That has led to the submission of a licence application to the EPA, and of planning and foreshore applications in respect of the site. In parallel work has been done on the assessment of the bridge leading onto Haulbowline Island which is the sole land access. There was structural deterioration which had to be addressed in order to enable the remediation work. Work is under way on that contract to repair the bridge. Risk assessments are being carried out on the steelworks site, which is the former plant site and the south tip which Irish Steel used as a dumping area many decades back.