Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I have not been long in the Department but I have read the files and the reports. Endless reports were produced, sections of which have been read into the record. However, there is a fear that these consultations are with the principal stakeholders at national and regional level and perhaps stakeholders on local issues did not have an input into national or regional ports policy, which is addressed by Senator Donohoe's amendment. He refers to inviting the stakeholders who may not been involved in the consultation previously to take part and broadening consultation to include any member of the public who wishes to make a submission. I am going along with that just in case individuals or small stakeholder groups did not make an input when the policy was formulated.

I do not want to go over the issue regarding local authority members because we have discussed that section. The representative associations wrote to the Department. However, the section was not about the appointment of local authority members as harbour commissioners but about appointing them to the boards of the ten main ports. That is a separate issue, which we discussed previously. Submissions have been made and we have replied to them. We have dealt with those sections but we will return to them on Report Stage.

Perhaps because Committee Stage has been so spread out that we have forgotten what we have dealt with. The amendment is a good idea, as it gives every small stakeholder and individual——