Ms Lucy McCaffrey:

No, we are in the fortunate position that we can fund it.

With regard to the masterplan, we felt very seriously we had stewardship to provide the necessary capacity for the economy. We set out, first, to project forward and forecast what the demand would be. We took a very conservative measure and we said we were going to plan for the next 30 years so, if growth were a conservative 2.5%, that would call for double the capacity.

We are not saying that we want to make the port twice as big. We are saying there will be a demand on the economy, and we are the people responsible to make sure it can be met.

The question of whether that overdevelops Dublin Port or ports on the east coast is understandable. Port activity tends to gravitate towards huge centres of population, and that is the case in Ireland. The biggest commercial port in the State gravitates to the Dublin region where 1.8 million people live and where the road and rail network is excellent. We believe it is our responsibility to meet that demand, and the last thing we want is insufficient capacity and trucks having to travel by road to Belfast or wherever.

Another aspect of the master plan was that we made a commitment that we would intensively use the land we have got and not think beyond our current footprint until we were sure that we were intensively using that land. We are working actively on that and reorganising the use of land to make the maximum use of it.

Is there more that needs to be said with regard to that?