Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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1196. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of requests by local authorities for funding for the upgrade or maintenance of ports or harbours; the amount requested by each; the amount allocated to each in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35815/17]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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The legislative remit of my Department extends only to the six Fishery Harbour Centres located at Castletownbere, Dingle, Dunmore East, Howth, Killybegs and Ros An Mhíl.  In addition I have responsibility for North Harbour at Cape Clear Island and for maintaining a small number of piers, lights and beacons around the coast in accordance with the 1902 ex-congested District Board Piers, Lights and Beacons Act.

Individual Local Authorities and their parent Department, the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government have responsibility for investment in the ongoing development, repair and maintenance of ports and harbours under their ownership.

Under my Department’s annual Fishery Harbour and Coastal Infrastructure Development Programme, limited funding has been provided to assist coastal Local Authorities in carrying out small scale projects for the development and repair of piers, harbours and slipways owned by them, subject to available Exchequer funding and overall national priorities. The Local Authority programme sets a maximum project cost at €150,000, of which my Department will contribute up to 75% on eligible expenditure. This cap is to ensure that there is a broad geographic spread of projects approved and that the economic benefits are distributed across as many coastal Local Authorities as possible.

I have approved funding of €3.8m for the 2017 Local Authority Harbour Development and Marine Leisure Programme.

On 3 February 2017, a request was issued to all coastal Local Authorities to submit prioritised lists of projects for consideration under the 2017 Programme. This resulted in 168 funding submissions from 15 coastal Local Authorities. A detailed breakdown of these submissions is included in Table 1.

A total of €3,828,500 has been approved for the completion of 67 eligible projects under the 2017 Programme.

Table 1