Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

In 1969 in my first research position I finished a report for the human sciences committee of the Irish national productivity committee on the factors affecting productivity in a small Irish port, namely, Galway. The issue was our response to changing circumstances in sea traffic. The port of Rotterdam had expanded massively into the roll-on, roll-off business. Right across the world in different ports it was a very tense time, as often ill-thought out proposals not made on the basis of consultation sought to achieve a decasualisation of dock labour which was one of the hottest issues.

My work is not as relevant to this legislation, but it involved interviewing all of those who had worked at the docks, their families and port users, as well as those who were seeking to develop both general cargo and other forms of trade operations from the port. I recall this because in a way I am very familiar with the space or physical setting of ports. It is important we bear in mind the cultural significance of a port or harbour in its physical setting. Some, not just families but generations of people, have constructed their lives and relationships with their city in terms of that proximity. This seems to have been swept aside in the consideration of thinking from the mid-1990s onward, when there was a view that harbour commissioners and boards were antiquated and needed to be replaced by what were called dynamic port development companies with a commercial ethos. There was a basis to people being unhappy with harbour companies or boards as in many ways they were inefficient. It is important to remember that there is significant evidence - I believe the Minister shares this view - that port operators or persons who retained their positions year after year used them in ways that were not in the interests of the development of the port or community in which it was situated. To go further, they were very clever at blocking new users. I need not go into the details now, but some ports show an interesting history of the attempts to achieve and sustain monopoly conditions in business, from the distribution of coal to the use of the stevedoring companies to provide labour for the unloading of ships. This is the rich background the the issue of ports. I am concerned about the evolution that has taken place into commercial companies because this can cross a line that means the new port company is less a harbour company in the old sense than a property company in the modern sense. These two sets of functions are not always easily reconciled and what I have to say deals with this issue in a number of ways.

The Minister of State, for whom I have great respect, does not carry the burden of this, but it is scandalous that we do not have a Department of the marine. I remember when I was a relatively young Member of the Oireachtas sharing a bottle of sparkling water with the late former Taoiseach, Charles J. Haughey. He asked about my views on the sea, ports and the marine and I casually used the phrase, "The Irish people must be encouraged to turn their eyes to the sea again." Because he was such a sensitive man and knew a good line, I heard that line repeated as the headline to his speech the following week. I wished him well with it as a philosophy. Unfortunately, one of the questions that could be used as a tie-breaker in any quiz held in this country would be where is the Department of the marine now, as it keeps moving. The breaking up of the functions associated with the marine makes no sense. It makes no sense in responding to international law. We are on the verge of some positive exploration developments in the Irish jurisdiction under the Law of the Sea treaty. We might be quite far on in arriving at a practical point of development in agreements between the United Kingdom and Denmark. There is a Marine Institute and we have finally got going in assessing our potential marine resources. It makes no sense to have no stand-alone Minister for the marine.

Responsibility for coastal zone management lies in one place, while responsibility for preparing the foreshore legislation lies somewhere in the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, someone else is responsible for commercial traffic and another person for fisheries. This Bill gives power to own property not just beyond the harbour but abroad. It makes sense to have harbour companies that can use the skills they have developed. That is not the issue. The functions related to the sea, marine, harbours, ports, fishing, safety and conservation are scattered indiscriminately across different Departments. I urge whatever Government comes in to take all that we know, given the new developments, and put them into a significant Department of the marine.

In his Second Stage speech the Minister mentioned that this Bill came about as a result of significant consultation. That statement is a bit florid. I do not recall seeing any report of significant consultation with elected members on the proposal to remove them from the board of the new port authorities. It may well be that there was significant consultation, as is the norm, with the City and County Managers Association which might have a particular view but, if so, it did not communicate this either to its elected members or through them to the public. I appeal to the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Kelleher, to save us having to oppose this Bill in respect of its amendment to the Harbours Act 1996 which takes away the representation by local authority members. The Minister retains the power to put a member back but the Bill describes this as a director from the local authority. It is not clear whether this is an elected member or, for example, a director of services. The Minister of State can clarify the point later but I suggest that he eliminate it and include the elected members.

I say this for practical reasons which I hope are not partisan although they will be perceived as such. Where the ports are strategically located they are inevitably involved with other spaces which involve transport for example, in line with modern thinking and meeting European standards, we need a road to access the port and to be able to define how the traffic will impact on an integrated transport model. If we are to integrate planning for transport and for the new port companies in respect of the physical space, their buildings, and urban planning, it is invaluable to have open, transparent representation of, and reporting from, the port company on the local authority. For example, in Galway city CIE has not yet resiled from its proposals for the largest site in a European city, having instructed the lead architect to get €9 million from the site. Approximately 15% of the proposals deal with public transport although CIE is statutorily obliged to provide public transport. It wants to sweat the site to build apartments and shops and other retail developments which we do not want. There is neither a road shown from that site to where the local authority has plans, nor any connection whatsoever with the harbour yet it has published plans for a multi-million euro development which does not access the CIE site or the proposed transport system for the city.

That is an example of what can happen if there is no open or transparent reporting or integrated thinking. It should not be the case in 2009 that responsibility for these developments lies with the Departments of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and Transport and that responsibility for harbours is somewhere else. We will not move from this position without integrated thinking that represents and achieves good planning.

Other issues arise. The Bill transfers significant powers from the Minister for Transport to An Bord Pleanála but bearing in mind the example I have given this will have the effect of stirring a wasps' nest if the Minister does not say how he defines strategic infrastructure in three places that adjoin one another but are not connected. In another way, and in other places, I will publicly develop my point about how CIE discharges its functions of establishing strategic infrastructure when it devotes only 15% of a site set aside for public transport to that purpose and uses the rest for property development. It has already put itself into the Bord Pleanála trap, to use a greyhound racing analogy, thinking it can get out of it fast. The port is trying to do the same.

This legislation, which removes the elected representatives from the authority and is not integrated with other planning, is now also going to An Bord Pleanála which will enjoy the functions the Minister previously had. The argument will be that this concerns strategic infrastructure. How does one balance that if it has nothing to do with significant port-related activity? This also involves fisheries and other port usages such as ferries and so on. These must be balanced. The best way to deal with this is to have a Department of the marine. It is necessary to be able to integrate different kinds of transport systems.

What kind of company will emerge when this legislation is passed? It seems to have many of the characteristics of a property development company. If I am right the following absurd situation arises, the company develops part of the area around the port, and has to sell this to leverage or trigger what it might borrow for what will be miniscule developments in respect of the traditional uses of ports. This could be a recipe for disaster, the resources of ports could be put into very expensive pre-planning models and models of property development that might never come to pass. Returning to my conversation with the late Mr. Charles Haughey, instead of turning the eyes of people in our ports to the sea we will have turned them to their cheque books, to the valuable sites around the port which will be used for property development.

I have a further point in this regard, which even raises constitutional difficulties. Supposing port companies decided to start reclaiming from the sea and started to drive coaches and four through whatever is left of the Foreshore Act, how would they then function? Who would own that which was reclaimed and on what basis could it be used? Could it be used for property development, for example? One is left with a speculative suggestion. The notion is that it does not matter what one is doing, be it fishing, transporting on the sea or dealing with others, such as dockers, as long as one calls one's company a port company. The legislation would be very bad if this were allowed.

I hope every point I have made has been offered on the basis of being positive. One should remove the section removing the elected representatives on the grounds of having better integration into everything else that is happening. One should think again about the powers being transferred to An Bord Pleanála. I have a commitment that is not sentimental to the communities around harbours and ports and to the people who worked there inter-generationally. Their history is important, as are their functions and types of future employment.

When great plans are being discussed regarding ports and harbours, there is sometimes what is alluded to in planning legislation and local government as a preplanning consultation. A preplanning consultation between representatives of boards and directors of services, or county or city managers, in office or retired, is not an adequate discussion. To be political about it, the members of the public who walked down to their harbours and ports, or who went down to the sea and looked at it, believed those ports or harbours were public spaces although they did not own them collectively. When I consider what is being proposed regarding port companies, which were harbour companies formerly and harbour boards theretofore, and people who might have been dockers, for example, I begin to think of the talk of signature buildings. The idea is that one will see signature buildings as one comes into one's port. In this respect, I am familiar with Galway Bay.

The word "harbour" is important in this legislation. It should be a harbour for things that float rather than a harbour for speculative investment. We should have had enough of the latter. I suggest, in respect of the points I am making, that we all want to get this Bill right in the short term. I hope there will be all-party agreement, regardless of who is next in Government, to have a Ministry for the marine that puts all these functions together. There should be local representation and, ideally, regional representation and actions should be transparent. We should have integrated thinking and planning in respect of all forms of transport, including road, rail, sea and air transport, domestic and international. That is the way to proceed. Meanwhile, the pub quiz will continue. The real question is, "Where is the Department of the Marine?" If one gets that right, one can finish off the opposition with the tie-breaker question, "Who is responsible for the foreshore act?" No one will get that right and one will be certain to win.

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