Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Brexit will mean big changes for our exporters and will have a major impact on Ireland's connectivity with Europe, which is central to our economy and society. It is estimated that up to 80% of Irish exports travel through Britain to get to mainland Europe using Britain as a land bridge, because it offers the quickest route to mainland Europe and other markets beyond. Swift routes are particularly important to the agrifood sector and others exporting perishable goods for obvious reasons.

If a good is perishable, it becomes less valuable as time passes and it remains in transit. This leads to an increase in the cost of exporting from Ireland and makes our goods more expensive and less competitive. When the UK becomes a third country and is outside of the EU, we could be looking at serious delays at Dover Port, where many trucks may have to queue for extended periods before making the crossing to Calais in France. This is a big concern for exporters and alternative options for transport must be explored across the country, not just in Dublin. We need the facility to bypass the UK and go straight to mainland Europe but this requires larger and faster ships and greater investment in our ports. We cannot wait until 2040 for this. It needs to happen now or we will be in trouble next March. We need to ensure proper transit security for our exporters and reduce our reliance on the UK land bridge which leaves us in a precarious position.

Even if Brexit were not happening, we should be making these investments in order to ensure security for our exporters and also to ensure that we are not overly reliant on the UK. We do not know what will be the final outcome of Brexit. We do not know what the future relationship between the UK and the EU will look like. We do not even know when that will be finalised. What we do know is we need to make preparations and we need to make them now.

A key part of our national response to Brexit should be to urgently review Ireland’s core network under the TEN-T funding programme. The goalposts have moved. Things have changed. These are exceptional circumstances. The review needs to happen now, not in 2023. I have spoken about this issue previously. It was utter madness to remove, in their entirety, the west and north west from the core network of the TEN-T funding programme. The TEN-T network is made up of two layers. The first is the comprehensive network which leads to the core network. One must be on the comprehensive network to make it onto the core network. The last Fine Gael-led Government, under the leadership of Deputy Leo Varadkar, as Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport at the time, removed the western rail corridor from the comprehensive network, thereby precluding the entire western region from being on the core map. That has massively disadvantaged the entire region and flies in the face of all balanced regional development. In order to qualify for core funding an area has to be on the core map. That is true for rail and road. The removal of the western rail corridor disqualified the western arc from Cork to Derry, Galway Port, Ireland West Airport in Knock and all other major infrastructure in the West from receiving core funding.

Article 1.2 of Decision No. 1692/96/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 23 July 1996 on community guidelines, which set up the European transport network and the TEN-T funding, does not mandate the State to have funding in place in order to leave projects on the application. There was no justification for removing the projects to which I refer. The State was not mandated to do so. Funding did not have to have been in place. They could have been left on. The then European Commissioner for Transport, in a letter to Brian Crowley, MEP, of Fianna Fáil, confirmed that the Commission’s role is to specify targets and criteria but that member states retained substantial sovereign rights to decide on the projects. Member states decide what projects go on the network. The previous Fine Gael-led Government removed the west and the north west from that project. The comprehensive network, on which we have been allowed remain, only accounts for 5% of available funding. The remaining 95% goes to the core network. We are precluded from applying for any of that funding.

I am asking the Minister to review the network. The core TEN-T funding available covers the period up to 2030. There is a review coming up but it is not fast enough. It is far too long to wait until 2023 particularly in light of Brexit and the fact we have to develop all of our ports and all of our transport infrastructure to deal with the incoming impact of it. It is incumbent on the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, as Minister with responsibility for those issues, to ensure the review happens immediately, that we do not wait and that we do everything to ensure the west and north west get back on to the core network and that we get the infrastructure and investment we need in our ports, road and rail networks.

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