Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)

The Acting Chairman may be able to envisage a layer of silt and gravel two and a half times my height. That is what has to be dredged. Then we can bring in boats and make Bantry an operating facility.

I cannot forget the Costello report. I will bring it in the next day and read a good part of the contents because it is a historic report. Legally, we cannot ignore it because somebody will be back before the courts again on the issue. It is appalling that in the event of an emergency we will not be able to bring out the required vehicles. People will come back to me and say they have a loan of a facility, a Mickey Mouse set-up whereby they can go down to the airstrip near Bantry and drive across the gravel. It will be like the last world war, during the final assault of the Allied forces against the Germans, when they had to go across beaches and half of them were shot. It will be something similar. They are building slipways now, but as it currently stands that is what we will have to do. I must refer to a person who broke her leg in Whiddy Island and had to go through a large amount of hassle and trouble. Perhaps in this day and age we could provide a helicopter and have her airlifted. Perhaps she would want that.

We talk about consultation and the lack of it, but there has been the greatest dearth of consultation with regard to Bantry over the years. I use the word "dearth" in capital letters. Some of it was the fault of the board. The oil spillages resulted in the setting up of the original harbour board by Peter Barry. He did that much, in fairness to him. It is fine to be critical but I will not be, because he is a gentleman. It had to be done. The Costello report found the harbour board had no controls. It could not send a pilot or tug boat to tell a tanker that it was unsafe to land and discharge its cargo. That was what happened in the Betelgeuse case. The boat should not have landed on the night in question. It was sent away from a Spanish port. They thought they could go to Bantry and if it blew up, only a few local people would be killed. They did not realise 44 Frenchmen would also be killed.

It is all to do with consultation. Mr. Peter Barry took one step. The Whiddy disaster followed and it was found the harbour board had no powers either to raise revenue or to impose controls, such as a harbour master. A harbour master could tell people they could not attach themselves to the single point mooring buoy because there was a five metre swell. That can be done now and as far as I am aware, the pilots still go out. That happened as a result of the Costello report. It found the set up in Bantry Bay was a disgrace. It may not have used the word "disgrace" but it gave the political system a rap on the knuckles.

The Costello report was efficient and cost the State £500,000. I wish modern tribunals would take note of it. One of its conclusions was that the harbour board should have powers so that it could be efficient and have controls. The harbour board had to have teeth to ensure another Betelgeuse disaster did not occur.

We all fell asleep, politically and otherwise, after the Betelgeuse disaster on 8 January 1979 in which 50 lives were lost. Now we are discussing again the lack of consultation in Bantry. Consultation is important, both in the Chamber and outside it.

Gulf Oil pulled out of Bantry when the Suez Canal opened and it found it did not have to build large tankers to go around the Cape of Good Hope because it could go through the Suez Canal instead. This meant Bantry was surplus to requirements. When the company pulled out, it compensated the State, not just once but twice. Millions of pounds were paid to the State. Was one million spent in Bantry? We begged for a handout and we were like the boy in the Dickens novel asking for more. We did not get a bob. A sum of £300,000 or £400,000 was supposed to have been set aside for a community centre in Bantry and extensions to the pier were promised which did not take place.

Now we are being asked to trust the same will not happen again. I have a lack of trust and confidence. Another disaster could happen and we are totally unprepared. There are emergency response services such as the fire brigade. Recently in the town there were squad cars, helicopters flying around, ambulances and fire brigades. The facilities are more appropriate to the Second World War when they landed on the beaches in France.

The Costello report has been ignored in this Bill. We took our eye off the ball. Gulf Oil pulled out of Whiddy and nothing happened for many years. The harbour board was there in name only. The island facilities were sold twice and Conoco Phillips came in. It was an Irish-American company and it did a lot of work in Whiddy, such as refurbishing tanks, some of which were built in the 1960s and were becoming rusty.

We fell asleep for years and no consultation was needed. Consultation and diligence in Bantry Bay are important because we now have a single point mooring buoy. I was out on a fishing boat when a rolling swell came and although there was no wind, it was so high we lost sight of a tanker anchored two miles away. As a result, we took for the shore at four in the morning. I have a fear that if a tanker had an emergency on a bad night and it was in a heavy swell, it might tie up to the single point mooring buoy. If it drifted to shore or damage was done to the ecology of Bantry Bay or Garinish Island, where would the Costello report fit in, as it were?

The Minister of State has copious notes for his response but I will be coming in again because I have covered only a small amount of what I want to say about consultation. The Minister of State might say that is another argument, but consultation has a central role. I was not consulted and the board was only consulted peripherally, if at all. There is a lot of anger, which has not yet been seen but might be when I, especially, as Government party member, and Senator McCarthy go knocking on doors in a few years in Bantry, Glengarriff, Beara, Durrus, Goats Path or Gerhies and people say to us that we are the men who oversaw the handover of control Bantry Bay and harbour to Cork.

There are different ports and scenarios. What if Waterford, Rosslare and New Ross were to marry and Rosslare were to object? New Ross and Waterford would be glad of the financial accounts we have. If they were making, pro rata, the tonnage per capita as Bantry is making they would be happy. I was asked by a senior figure in Cork County Council last week why the Bill does not propose that Baltimore and Kinsale be governed by Cork County Council. What is happening to Arklow? I do not like being singled out in Bantry as a maverick.

I cannot comment on the position in Fenit, I cannot comment on how it is run or its corporate governance but I put it to the Minister of State that as of now there has been little or no consultation, and this amendment is concerned with the consultation process. I put it to the Minister that the consultation process envisaged was not followed, particularly in the letter to which I refer. I have great respect for the then Minister of State, Deputy Browne. I am sure he wrote the letter in good faith in terms of prior consultation, due diligence and so on.

There was a time when we all believed that certain factions in Northern Ireland of different religious backgrounds and political persuasions could never sit down together and talk, but they did that eventually and, thankfully, a peace process is now in place. However, I envisage all hell breaking loose in Bantry Port. It would be very easy to blockade Bantry Port and stop a tanker attaching itself to the SPM. Fishermen do it. I am not advocating that but disbanding the Bantry Harbour Board is envisaged in the Bill, regardless of whether we like it. It is stated that it is an enabling measure and that it might not happen for a few years, but because of lack of consultation at council and local authority level I envisage resignations from the Bantry Harbour Board. I envisage major disruption taking place. One could argue that this could be for better or worse — perhaps in time to come it might be good — but we cannot put a gun to people's heads and tell them that we are disbanding Bantry Harbour Board. The Bill may not state that, but that is what is envisaged, yet there has been no consultation whatsoever on this issue.