Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In a way, Ireland has been a little lucky that a potentially hard, disastrous Brexit has been averted, at least for a period. As a country, we now have breathing space to confirm changes that are coming in any event and to get the island more ready for the fact that, one way or another, the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union is changing. It is important for ports such as that of Cork, Rosslare and Dublin that the breathing space is used because in the future, we will need ships to travel directly from the Continent to those ports. As the House will be aware, it was a shock to Rosslare when the Irish Ferries ship was moved to Dublin. From a Dublin point of view, given the level of traffic that is typically on the M50, it is difficult to envisage that virtually all the imports and exports to and from Ireland could end up being processed at Dublin Port. Dublin does not have the road infrastructure to take that. I hope that the breathing space can be used to beef up the development of Rosslare and Cork ports. I acknowledge that quite a bit of work has been done at all three ports but there is an awful lot more to do, particularly to enable them to take large volumes intended for the south west, the south east and the midlands. We need to be able to use all three ports to their maximum capabilities. It would be good because it would avoid being overly focused on Dublin, which does not have the route capacity to deal with all the trucks if they end up coming.

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