Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and I thank our guests for their attendance. The updates on how the ports are doing were interesting. When the vote happened in 2016, and everything following that, there were many predictions things would go badly for us as a country and at our main ports. That never happened, because of the work done at Rosslare and Dublin to maintain some sort of continuity, look after the haulage sector and to ensure the country's shelves were kept full. The concern at the time was we would not have bread on the shelves. We have come through that tricky period. It is great to hear talk of growth, new routes and looking to new opportunities. It is a positive space to be in and I wanted to acknowledge that, especially in light of the Windsor Framework announced two days ago. It is great to see we are moving to the next chapter, or so we hope. It will always be an ongoing process but we must get past the worst of it.

I will start with Mr. Carr to discuss Rosslare. My colleague, Senator Malcolm Byrne, whom I know Mr. Carr is very familiar with, tabled a Commencement matter in the Seanad this morning on the M11 and the need to see completion there. Mr. Carr has mentioned the eagerness of Rosslare Europort to see road projects are completed, so I wanted to mention that. He also mentioned rail connectivity. We are awaiting the all-island rail review and the publication of that report, which we hope will happen in the next number of weeks. The Minister was waiting for an executive in Northern Ireland. We may or may not have that soon, but in any event we know to an extent what is coming in the report, as is often the case. I am based in County Mayo and we have a big focus on the western rail corridor because we want to eventually link Mayo, through Galway, to Foynes and over to Mr. Carr in Rosslare. That is the ambition and the vision we have for the western region. We have connectivity to Dublin Port and that is great, but we want to have a link to our second-largest port over on the east coast. It is important to us and I would love to hear Mr. Carr's views on that. We are not talking about this happening in the next five years, but somewhere down the line.

Turning to Mr. O'Connell, I have had the pleasure of visiting Dublin Port on a number of occasions in the past few years and it is an impressive operation. Seeing what goes on and what the company manages to do is quite impressive. When I was there three or four years ago, there was talk about the constraints of the site and the desire to grow the operations of the port. There was mention also of new routes and more connectivity. How is the company planning to expand operations with respect to new routes and businesses given the constraints entailed by the physical capacity of the site? What is the long-term plan for that? It is great to hear the company is looking at amending processes there in light of the way things have worked out in the past couple of years. There were some teething problems at the start with the extra checks required and working with the haulage industry.

Mr. O'Connell mentioned digitisation. One of the recommendations of the Seanad special committee on Brexit was that we focus on it because it would make things move quicker. Where is that at? Mr. Carr may have a view on that as well. How advanced is digitisation in terms of the import and export of goods and is there anything the witnesses need assistance with from the perspective of the Government?