Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)

This is a long-running saga impacting on the Coast Guard station in Courtown. The Coast Guard at this station serves the coast of north Wexford and south Wicklow. More than 20 individuals regularly and bravely serve our communities in that area. The current old rocket cart station is one of the oldest in the country. It is a limestone building with a very rich history - it was unsuccessfully raided for arms during the War of Independence - but is currently no longer suitable for use because it was meant for single use.

With male and female crews, it is not suitable and the conditions are not good enough. The local Coast Guard has been able to acquire a five-year lease on a private house in the local area and it is now two years into the lease period. This saga has seen approximately seven Ministers visit the station over the years. During my five years in the Seanad, I raised the matter on five separate occasions with various Ministers to try to get an update on the position.

Let me take the Minister of State, Deputy Robert Troy, through the history of what I was told in my time in the Seanad. In February 2022, then Minister of State, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton came into the Seanad and told me six possible sites had been identified by the OPW and that it was part of the OPW’s building priority programme. Such a priority was it, and nothing having happened by November 2022, the Minister, Deputy Simon Harris, who is obviously quite familiar with south Wicklow-north Wexford, came into the Chamber and assured me that the Courtown Coast Guard building was one of the key priorities for the OPW and that “OPW officials are giving this project every priority possible at this time”. It gave it an awful lot of priority and nothing had happened by the summer of 2023, so the then Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Deputy Jack Chambers, came down to Courtown Harbour. Courtown is certainly a wonderful place to spend your summer but not to have a meeting about something the OPW had made no movement on. The Minister of State came down and helped to resolve potential issues between Wexford County Council and the OPW. The OPW then made it clear that there were no outstanding issues with the county council. We thought we would see progress then but nothing happened. In October 2023, when I raised the issue again in the Seanad, a Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Anne Rabbitte, told me Courtown was “one of the key priorities of the OPW in its building programme”. It was such a key priority that I had to raise the matter once again a year later by way of another Commencement matter. This time it was with Minister of State, Deputy Kieran O’Donnell. He reiterated that the matter was a key priority but informed me that the OPW had then completed an appraisal of all the possible sites and that progress had been made. The only progress I have seen on the position reflected in previous answers is that while there were six sites in the past, this number decreased to five. There was a possible site identified but then, for commercial reasons, it could not be proceeded with.

The Minister of State who is present, Deputy Troy, will forgive me and the Coast Guard for questioning what the OPW believes to be a key priority if something that was meant to have been sorted out a decade ago still has not seen any progress. I appreciate that he is answering answer on behalf of the Minister of State responsible for the OPW but I hope he is not going to give me a cut-and-paste answer, as a number of his predecessors have had to do.

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