Galway Port project will be ‘good to go’ by end of year
The planning green light for the Galway Port expansion should ‘be good to go’ by the end of this year, clearing one of the main hurdles in terms of freeing up EU funding for the project, it was claimed this week.
Galway Harbour Company CEO, Eamon Bradshaw, told the Galway City Tribune that the port needed to free itself from a ‘Catch-22’ situation in relation to accessing Ten-T EU funding for port developments.
“To qualify for Ten-T funding we need to have Tier 1 or Tier 2 port status but we cannot achieve that without expanding our facility. Our planning has been submitted and we are going down the road of IROPI project [Imperative Reasons of Overriding Public Interest],” Eamon Bradshaw said.
He said that as part of the planning process, the Galway Harbour Company was waiting to engage in a consultation with the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) as regards the provision of compensatory habitat environmental measures.
“We are certainly hopeful of completing the planning process by the end of this year, or even possibly before that, with a provisional start-up date for the project by the end of 2017.
“It is the function of the Minister for the Environment to grant IROPI status to the project but we confidently expect to meet all the criteria as regards that process,” said Eamon Bradshaw.
Phase One of the port development plan would take three years to complete at a cost of €52 million with the construction of a new port south of Renmore Point that would facilitate the berthing of cruise liners and larger cargo vessels. Ten-T funding, if Galway qualified, would ‘cover’ 20% of that investment.
For more on the Galway Port expansion, see this week’s Galway City Tribune