Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

My amendment, which as the Minister said we will discuss later, proposes that the elected members and not the CEO as set out in the legislation would have the key say but only following consultation with the stakeholders group. I urge the Minister to support the principle of this amendment. There is major dissatisfaction about the current situation. I am not commenting on the individual cruise berth proposal, which we will also debate later. I attended the hearings over the past four weeks, which were also attended by representatives of the public and representatives of community groups and harbour groups and so on. It is a pity that these people did not sit down five years ago and talk. We would not be in the situation and the conflict we are in now over the future of the harbour if all those people had been compelled to sit down years ago and work out a plan that everybody could get behind. Instead, plans were hatched behind closed doors. That has to change.

See this speech in context