Our most important passenger and freight ports

Cranes constructed by Liebherr in Killarney, assembled in Cobh and heading to US.

They've reached NJ/NY

Tender for Rosslare Europort Terminal 7 and Enabling Works has been issued;

Estimated total value

Value excluding VAT: 200000000.00 EUR

This post aged exceptionally badly, there's already 42km of new rail and sleepers arriving in Foynes today for the job.

2021 data:

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/spt/statisticsofporttrafficquarter4year2021/

Galway port

oil imports

scrap metal exports

ferries to Aran islands

Naval service visits

Marine institute visits

Anything else?

Wicklow being that much busier than Sligo seems so strange as Sligo always looked like a substantial port.

Although some of that might have been down to that impounded ship tied up for years!

So foynes , galway ,Sligo,killybegs from the Shannon up , is there much docking in Derry / Lough foyle , and is it more difficult post Brexit ,

But if galway and Sligo were out of the mix there wouldn't be much port facilities on the the west ,

Surely port development should focus on the East and South coasts, nearer to major foreign markets and international shipping lanes, as well as being closer to major Irish population centres. Waterford/Belview has huge potential, and already good ship-to-road and rail facilities.

Several of the parcels of land identified by the LDA are in active use and in many cases the user would consider that to remain the case for a long time. TheLDA list is of possible housing sites, it remains to be seen how many actually get used for housing.

It remains a primarily ro-ro port, there is exceptionally limited scope for rail freight there. Container and bulk ports on the other hand do have opportunities, hence the Foynes relay

Does handle containers thought, the twice weekly Finnlines service from Zeebrugge carries containers.. However these are mostly for local area, and the volumes are too low for rail freight at the moment(about 30-40 containers per vessel)..

No, basically. Irish Rails interest in the port is making money, investing for rail freight won't meet that goal as easily as more roro

As fuel slowly gets more and more expensive and it gets harder and harder to get the truck drivers in the first place(!), rail becomes more and more attractive.

It might take decades but the price differential is only going one way and ultimately rail will win out for the efficiency of resource use, and lower labour costs

The other potential advantage of rail is that it is far easier to electrify fully than almost any other mode of transport. All the hybrid stuff and hydrogen powererd stuff have immense technical and operational drawbascks compared with putting electricity directly into overhead wires. We hear a lot about the cost of electrification but almost nothing about the various operational benefits. Its all proven technology.

One tip: get your advice from the Continent, rather than the UK, which has messed it up.

Even using Diesel Locos, hauling a train full of containers is less polluting than 20 or so large trucks. The main ports fro containers from ship to rail will be Waterford and Dublin for the forseeable future. (Foynes is in the wrong place - a much longer sea journey from European ports).

If long-distance freight from Southern and Central Europe is more likely to go by container, then using rail at the Irish end will make nore sense. I realise that the potential for rail on purely domestic runs is low.

But I can't quite fathom why Ireland is so exceptional in not going for serious rail electrification, and why there is such an obsession with at times unproven hybrid vehicles.

Still trotting out the same old subsidy story after 15 odd years.. Rail freight doesn’t get subsidies in this country, it’s operated on a commercial basis and IEs rail freight department makes a postitive contribution to the groups finances even after paying outsized track access charges.. If anything freight is subsiding passenger rail.. It also ignores the fact that road does not cover its costs, as central exchequer funding is used to build road infrastructure and subsidise PPP road schemes that are under performing..

when are we going to acutually see these hydrogen or battery powered trucks(without massive payload penalties) you keep talking about, they seem to be always 5 years away.. Self driving trucks is even more of a pipe dream, if the tech doesn’t work on wide streets and clear blue skies in Californian, what hope does it have in driving rain or snow on the N5,N26 or most other national roads in the country