Sir, - I have been asked to draw your attention to the omission of port-users and our members with major marine interests from the new Dun Laoghaire Harbour Board. Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Chamber of Commerce has written to the Taoiseach about this matter, and has stated that our members' level of disappointment over the composition of the board is unprecedented.
This disappointment has intensified to outrage since our members realised that the agenda of the Government was to ensure that major port-users were not only omitted from the new board of Dun Laoghaire Harbour, but from other harbour boards as well. Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Chamber of Commerce has instructed me to express, in the strongest possible terms, its outrage at having its representation removed from the Board of Dun Laoghaire harbour.
Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Chamber has been actively involved over the past 20 years in having institutional structure and management of Dun Laoghaire Harbour changed. On many occasions it stood alone in the face of public compaigns and objections, in order to maximise the national resource that is our harbour.
Our members served with distinction on the interim Harbour Board and were nominated by us for their vast experience and appropriate expertise. Our council views the omission of a chamber representative from the board as, detrimental to our port. It perceives the Government's action, which ignores the wider county business community, as a studied insult to the chamber.
You will recall that "Partnership 2000" called for an increase in productivity in our port of IS per cent a year until the year 2000. The Minister for the Marine is a deputy for Dun Laoghaire Rathdown and is fully aware that our chamber represents 550 companies, employing 65,000 people - and that these include the major harbour-users.
We note that the omission of representative commercial interests from the board is in contradiction to the statements made in the Dail by the Minister for State, who is also from this constituency.
We would like to point out that the manner in which these board appointments were made is not acceptable to the chamber and the countywide business interests which include Dundrum, Sandyford, Blackrock and Dun Laoghaire. We now urge the Government to review this situation and take whatever steps are necessary, to give the business community as represented by the chamber a meaningful role in this new body, - Yours, etc.,
Chief executive, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Chamber of Commerce, Dun Laoghaire Shopping Centre, Co Dublin