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

I wish to ask the Taoiseach about one specific piece of infrastructure that I have discussed with him particularly when he was Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport and was responsible for this piece of infrastructure, namely, Dún Laoghaire Harbour. A very important meeting will take place in the council tonight at which there will be a discussion as to whether Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company will be dissolved and Dún Laoghaire Harbour transferred under the full control and ownership of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. As the Taoiseach knows, I have campaigned on this since I was elected to the Dáil, for six or seven years, and have argued with him, among other Ministers responsible for transport, that it should have happened long ago. The company had driven out the ferry and wasted millions of euro and there has been a risk assessment and due diligence. The county manager of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown says the council still does not know, after two years of investigating the finances of the company, what is going on in it, how much revenue it has, what real liabilities it has and so on. I very much welcome a report by the county manager that came out last week in which she has endorsed the position we have been campaigning for, that is, the dissolution of the harbour company, a dysfunctional quango, and its transfer into public ownership, a big victory for people power. However, because of the six years of delay on the part of the Taoiseach among others, major questions hang over the financial position of Dún Laoghaire Harbour, questions that I appealed to successive Ministers to get to the bottom of.

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