Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)

In January of this year, my colleague, the Minister of State, launched the Government's ports policy statement. The policy statement aims to better equip the port sector and its stakeholders to meet national and regional capacity and service needs. One of the key challenges that lies ahead is the provision of adequate in-time port capacity, particularly for unitised trade. The policy statement sets out a framework to ensure that capacity needs are identified, planned and progressed in a co-ordinated manner.

The Department is initially consulting the commercial ports concerned to determine their view of port capacity and how they intend to deal with the projected capacity requirement. The Department is interested in key projects identified by the commercial ports as essential to deal with anticipated capacity requirements to 2014 and beyond, and whether the ports see these as being funded from their resources or in partnership with the private sector.

Drogheda Port Company has indicated that its proposal for the development of a new deep water port at Bremore will be a key element of its response to the information request from the Department in regard to port capacity. The timeframe for the proposed development and the preparation of a detailed business plan are matters for Drogheda Port Company in the first instance.

I cannot say at this stage which projects will meet the national capacity requirement. The new policy framework encourages all port sector stakeholders to address the issue of capacity provision. The policy statement makes it clear that the State will support capacity provision as residual financier, but only if proven essential to progress identified high quality self-sustaining projects. Clearly, not all proposals are likely to proceed.

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