Dublin Port faces capacity 'crisis'

Dublin Port is to run out of roll-on, roll-off freight capacity by the end of next year and has already had to turn customers away, its chief executive, Enda Connellan, said yesterday

Mr Connellan told the Oireachtas Committee on Transport that the port, which handles more than two-thirds of containerised trade to and from Ireland, and 50 per cent of the State's imports and exports, was facing a "crisis" in capacity.

He said plans to expand the port by reclaiming 50 acres of Dublin Bay had been with the regulatory authorities since 1988. The company had been told by the Department of Communications and Marine that it should get planning permission from Dublin City Council before it applied to the department for a foreshore licence. But the council had said it should get a foreshore licence first.

The meeting was also told that backers of a proposed new east coast port at Bremore in north Co Dublin are to present firm proposals for the facility to Minister for Transport Martin Cullen early in the new year.

But it was acknowledged even by supporter Tom Morrissey that existing proposals for the Bremore facility, while having four times the capacity of Drogheda's existing port, do not create the capacity needed to accommodate a relocated Dublin Port.

Mr Morrissey has put forward plans to further greatly expand planned capacity at Bremore and to build a Manhattan-style quarter in the docklands. The current port was described as a "back yard" of Dublin while he wanted to make it "the front door".

Drogheda Port Company and a private sector partner are behind the plans to build the new port at Bremore.

Commenting on the proposals, secretary general of the Department of Transport John Lumsden said Drogheda Port Company would find "no unnecessary red tape" in the way of proposals for expansion.