[Article] New port for North Co Dublin - "not a threat to City Port" says dept.

mike65

from rte

A new port is to be developed at Bremore near Balbriggan in north Co Dublin, as part of a joint venture between Drogheda Port and a private company.

Minister for Transport and the Marine Noel Dempsey today briefed the Government on his intentions to give Drogheda Port company permission to develop a joint facility at Bremore.

Legislation will have to be prepared and passed before the new port can go ahead.

It is understood that Castle Market Holdings will be Drogheda Port Company's partner in the planned port.

A spokesperson for the Department of Transport and the Marine said the proposed development would not have any implications for the future of Dublin Port.

Dublin City Council is currently carrying out a study into the future for the capital's port, which will be studied by the Department before any decisions are made on that issue.

Drogheda Port Company said today's Government decision was a positive move and they intend to move forward now with an Environmental Impact Statement

They hope to be in the planning process within a year. Work on the plan began five years ago, and aims to develop new facilities at Bremore at an estimated cost of €210m.

I'm not familair with the location or its potential for expansion but would be it disingenuous to say out right that Dublin City Port is not going to be effected by this?

Mike.

Prof_V

mike65 wrote:

I'm not familair with the location or its potential for expansion but would be it disingenuous to say out right that Dublin City Port is not going to be effected by this?
Mike.

I think the idea is to compete with Dublin, at least initially. I did work out that Bremore, if expanded to the full capacity proposed, could take over all Dublin's unitised (ro-ro and container) traffic with plenty of room for growth. The first phase of Bremore wouldn't be sufficient to replace Dublin, even at current traffic levels, though - it would only accommodate about two-thirds of Dublin's current unitised traffic. What it would probably do is eliminate any need for expansion at Dublin.

There's also a substantial amount of oil traffic through Dublin (over a quarter of Dublin's imports in 2006), something Bremore, as proposed, doesn't seem to provide for at all, and not something that gets talked about a lot in the debate over relocating the port. There'll be some capacity for other bulk traffics at Bremore, and Tom Roe's Point at Drogheda would still be available, so Drogheda/Bremore could compete with Dublin, and if necessary supplant it, in this respect.

BendiBus

Prof_V wrote:

There's also a substantial amount of oil traffic through Dublin (over a quarter of Dublin's imports in 2006)

I've often hoped that would be one of the first things to be moved out of Dublin. There's a lot of oil stored down there isn't there? Having seen the smoke from Buncefield about an hour after it went up (from a safe distance, out the window of an aeroplane) I would not like to see that happen adjacent to Central Dublin.

road_high

Why not invest further in Waterford port and divert much of sth leinster and munster freight through it. The N9 new road will put it ony an hour and half from greater Dublin and clsoer to mainland Europe and the continent....

Prof_V

BendiBus wrote:

I've often hoped that would be one of the first things to be moved out of Dublin. There's a lot of oil stored down there isn't there? Having seen the smoke from Buncefield about an hour after it went up (from a safe distance, out the window of an aeroplane) I would not like to see that happen adjacent to Central Dublin.

I agree, but I don't expect people around Bremore will accept it (and I know there are far, far fewer around there than around Dublin Port, but rational argument tends not to get you very far in these kinds of things). In fact, there was an anti-Bremore group (googling doesn't turn them up any more, and I don't know the URL) who used oil storage as part of their case against the scheme, even though there haven't been any explicit proposals for it. Of course, because the oil storage at Dublin would place such severe restrictions on what could be built near it, it would probably have to move fairly early in any redevelopment process for planning reasons.

Bluetonic

BendiBus wrote:

I've often hoped that would be one of the first things to be moved out of Dublin. There's a lot of oil stored down there isn't there? Having seen the smoke from Buncefield about an hour after it went up (from a safe distance, out the window of an aeroplane) I would not like to see that happen adjacent to Central Dublin.

So it would be fine to put it beside a large town?

Jesus wept.

Maskhadov

they should really start to move everything out of dublin port ASAP to bremore.the expansion of bremore is a bit on the small side.

Prof_V

Bluetonic wrote:

So it would be fine to put it beside a large town?
Jesus wept.

There is a big difference in residential population within, say, 5km - something below 25,000 at Bremore, over 270,000 at Dublin Port - and probably an even bigger difference in transient population. I'm not sure it's possible to find a feasible port site within the GDA that's much farther from towns than Bremore. You could go outside the GDA, but then I'd expect political resistance to be even stronger, and the hazard of trucking the stuff long distances would have to be considered (as it would in a move to Bremore, though the distances would be shorter). It may be that the only solution for now would be to leave the oil traffic at Dublin (and thus forget redeveloping most of the port lands).

Incidentally, even the draft post-Buncefield requirements for oil storage that I've seen don't seem to consider planning restrictions beyond 400m from the perimeter fence, and high-density residential would be allowed from 300m. The evacuation radius at Buncefield was 800m, though it might possibly have had to be wider had the weather been less favourable to dispersing the smoke plume (I used the 5km figure above because, at Bremore, it takes in the whole Balbriggan area).

dowlingm

Just building the port may not be sufficient - look at the resistance to moving Limerick Port to Foynes. I would have thought the City Council would be dying to get shot of it so that more hotels and apartments could go up but no.

vektarman

This will also affect a lot of Dublin business's, Guinness are going to make a decision early next year about selling St James Gate and moving to a greenfied site near Balbriggan.

Rashers72

Pity Irish Rail and the government can't sort out getting some of the freight onto the railways, like they have achieved in every single other EU country.
Bremore is a perfect example of a major rail line right beside a port. I wonder what % of freight into the new port will go by rail (maybe it's all roll-on/roll-off?).
Instead we are selling off the cranes on the rail freight yards, selling of rail freight yards, and pulling up freight only lines. I know the unions ruined a lot of it, but why the government did not do anything I'll never understand.
Instead we have even more trucks on the road, and the M50 car park gets even worse. It's a real shame :mad:

Prof_V

The City Council study on Dublin Bay, which addresses redevelopment of the port, is out:
http://www.dublincity.ie/press_news/press_releases/a_vision_for_dublin_bay.asp
It's important to remember that it's only a preliminary study and deals with other aspects of the bay too. I think the Government is planning a more detailed feasibility study on the port relocation issue.

spacetweek

vektarman wrote:

This will also affect a lot of Dublin business's, Guinness are going to make a decision early next year about selling St James Gate and moving to a greenfied site near Balbriggan.

Interesting. I always knew it would only be a matter of time before they did this.

Their St. James's site is about 30 acres (accoring to my rough measurement on Google Maps.) Assuming they bag about 50 mill per acre, which is reasonable for a city centre location like this, that's 1.5 billion euro. They'd be mad not to sell.