Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

The Government's ports policy statement, which I launched early last year, aims to equip the port sector and its stakeholders better to meet national and regional capacity and service needs. One of the key challenges that lie ahead is the provision of adequate in-time port capacity, especially for unitised trade, lo-lo and ro-ro. The policy statement sets out a framework to ensure that capacity needs are identified, planned and progressed in a co-ordinated manner.

As part of this process, my Department appointed in September 2005 a firm of consultants expert in this field, Fisher Associates, to help determine whether the anticipated capacity requirement to 2014 and beyond can be efficiently and adequately met through the successful advancement and implementation by the port sector of some combination of the various proposals under development in the sector.

Detailed submissions outlining proposals for new capacity for unitised trade were received from the following ports and evaluated by Fisher Associates: Cork, Greenore, Dublin, Drogheda, Rosslare, Shannon Foynes and Waterford. The final report of Fisher Associates was completed in June 2006 and the Government noted its conclusions in July 2006. It is intended to publish the broad conclusions of the report in an information paper shortly, which will be available on my Department's website at www.transport.ie.

In summary, the study concludes that there is significant available capacity for lo-lo traffic at Irish ports. Available capacity for ro-ro traffic also exists, although less so than in the case of lo-lo. The conclusions of the study clearly demonstrate that the projects being progressed by the ports sector have the potential to deliver adequate capacity, in line with the Government's ports policy.

I assure the Deputy that my Department will closely monitor the progress of these proposals, and for its part will certainly do what is necessary to ensure the statutory and other corporate governance requirements are dealt with expeditiously. If there is a sound business case for these projects, the Minister for Transport and the Minister for Finance, as shareholders in the State-owned port companies, will be positively disposed towards them.

While the Government, as shareholder and policymaker, has a clear interest in ensuring the provision of adequate, cost-effective port capacity, the development of the necessary capital projects is primarily a matter for the individual port companies and their boards. This is in line with the commercial mandate given to the port companies under the Harbours Act 1996.

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