North Atlantic Skyline - - Photographs from the west of Ireland (Galway, Mayo, Clare, Limerick, Roscommon and even Leitrim)

If you build it, they will go

For how long more ? An oil tanker waits to enter Galway Harbour this evening.

Ahh…the Christmas rush. If you’re like me, you’ve ended up buying a few things you don’t need, or gotten a few things for people that they won’t use or don’t need. You’re not alone.

Take the Dublin Port Tunnel which opened last week. It enables trucks to drive under the city, from Dublin Port out to the M50 orbital route around the city, assuming the awkward buggers will actually use it. At a cost of 750 million euro*, it’s a major infrastructure investment, and intended to relieve traffic congestion in the city. So what does the Government propose to do next? Move Dublin Port up the road to either Balbriggan or Dundalk. It’s not that there is anything particularly wrong with the port where it is – it’s just that the dockland property has become so expensive and valuable that every developer in the country wants to build apartments there (the tunnel will come in handy for the dockland apartment-dwelling yuppies to get to their summer homes in the west faster, I suppose).

Down in Limerick, a tunnel is planned under the Shannon Estuary which will create a bypass of the city for traffic. The tunnel has been designed to be buried deep in the river bed so that it would not interfere with the deep water port at Limerick. But the deep water port is about to be moved downstream to Foynes so the extra engineering (and cost) is no longer necessary. But, since the contract has already been awarded, the money will be spent anyway on the original design. Joined up Government, eh ?

Meanwhile in Galway, a grand plan has been proposed to transform the dockland area in the city. It would mean building a new, deeper water port further out in Galway Bay, and using the land currently occupied by the oil terminal for more sedentary use – in other word, apartments and shops. The thought of all that newly-freed space in a prime location, and the heavy engineering required to effectively move the existing port a few hundred metres west must have every developer in the West salivating with anticipation. Except there is a wrinkle in the plan. Minister Frank Fahey has suggested that, rather than build new port facilities in the city, the fishing port at Ros a Mhíl (Rosaveel) should be enhanced instead. And just because it is a political crowd-pleasing suggestion in an election year doesn’t mean it is a bad idea.

There are a couple of compelling reasons for pursuing the Ros a Mhíl (Rosaveel) proposal. Firstly, the harbour business in the city cannot grow, except seaward. Already, apartment blocks nestle side-by-side with oil tanks, and there is no sign that the thirst for hydrocarbons will wane any time soon [Niall O Brolchain’s best efforts notwithstanding]. Ros a Mhíl (Rosaveel) doesn’t have that problem – there is lots of cheap and uninhabited land available, and is already a mainly industrial port – namely for tourist ferries to the islands and also for fishing. Secondly, the Ros a Mhíl (Rosaveel) harbour has just been upgraded [if you took a trip out to the Aran Islands in the last year, you’d have seen the earthmovers dumping tons of gravel into the harbour to create a new breakwater]. It is less affected by tides and is also closer to the mouth of the Bay.

There is a third reason too. Ros a Mhíl (Rosaveel) is one of the main fish processing sites on the west coast. But the days of the European fishing industry are well and truly numbered, and it’s unlikely that there will be many fishing boats landing catches there in a decade from now. [By the way, here is an
assurance from a senior civil servant in 1970 that the fishing port in Galway city would not be moved to Rosaveel].

Of course, moving the port to Ros a Mhíl (Rosaveel) means that everything landed there must be carted back into the city. Moving oil and bitumen could be done by pipeline but, given the protests in north Mayo, would be unlikely. Instead, it would have to be transported by trucks. And you’d need a new road for that. Luckily, just such a proposal exists – to link a new road along the coast from Ros a Mhíl (Rosaveel) to link up with the proposed Galway City Outer Bypass, which was announced a few weeks ago. An ambitious proposal, no doubt about it - just not a funded one. Come to think of it, the whole of the Dock proposal is unfunded – all 2 billion euros of it. Still, it is an election year – anything could happen.

* This NRA press release from 6 years ago shows how the costs has spiralled, from an original 175million pounds in 1999 to 353 million euros a year later and finally 750 million euros by the time it opened.

Posted by Monasette at January 7, 2007 07:32 PM