Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Ger Highland is with me. Ger is the president of the Irish Road Holliers Association. And Ger, I understand you have a suggestion as to what the next government, government that's currently being formed behind closed doors, what they might do with regard to Hollyhead to prevent kind of disruption in the future. What is it?
We would be hoping that there would be a task force set up on Holyhead with ourselves included in the discussions. And we would like to see Holyhead being taken in, in part of the programme for government. And what ultimately would you like to see happen, say, on foot of that task force? Is it, you know, is it that...
Somebody buys a stake in Hollyhead. It's a private company that runs it, that we kind of invest in it kind of through the state. What's the hope? The hope is that we would invest. It needn't necessarily be Hollyhead. It needs to be somewhere within that area, Liverpool, Hollyhead, that type of an area. We would hope that there would be investment there by the Irish government that this type of disruption can never happen again.
And how would they do that? What's the ask from the government's point of view? That they buy a berth or that they develop a port or what is it? Well, that would be all up for discussion with the task force, whether it would be a berth that would be bought, whether it would be a port that would be developed. But we'll be also looking for an extra shipping line to be brought on between Ireland and the UK. We need more competition on this route.
Okay. So tell me a little bit then about how disruptive the last few weeks have been for your members. Asher, the last few weeks really has been horrendous for the members because we were travelling up and down the Lentenbrett of the UK trying to get ferries, trying to get space on ferries, trying to get goods delivered in the UK, goods collected and get bookings on ferries back here to Ireland. And
If the government had had, say, a stake in Holyhead or had a berth or whatever or another port, how would that have been different? Might they just have kind of moved quicker to repair it or what would have happened? Well, if the government had, if our government had a berth in Holyhead, that would have been a second berth.
So therefore then we wouldn't have had the disruption that we had. We may have had to travel up and down the UK to get certain space on ferries, but we would have had one more port that we could have moved across a couple of the vessels now and that would have got us out of the problems that we were in. So Holyhead is privately owned and privately run as a port. Yes.
Would there be any interest amongst your members in setting up a company and developing a port instead of getting the state involved? Well...
The cost of it would be prohibitive for the start. We certainly would have an interest in getting involved in talks and see where this is going to lead us and what type of finance is going to be involved. Yes, definitely the Roadhog Association would be very interested in being one of the participation groups.
members in that group. So do we have any idea how much it would cost? You say kind of prohibitive. Say if the state were to get involved or set up a task force, even just to look into it, what would the sums be? Do we know? The task force certainly shouldn't cost a whole lot. And it'll depend then on what size of a port we're talking about, what size of a berth we're talking about, where it is, the value of land, the value of...
what another shipping line may be interested in putting in to get this up and running. So, you know,
You know, there's a lot of variables there to be taken into account. We're obviously hugely dependent on that kind of east-west link. Is there the same sense of urgency in the UK about all of this? No. We found that there wasn't. There was certainly a sense of urgency in Holyhead and the Isle of Anglesey because I suppose there's probably most families would have somebody working at some stage in Holyhead and in the shipping end of it.
There is 4.8 million tonnes of freight moved between Ireland and the UK every year, and that's rising. So 98% of them goods that's moved between Ireland and the UK are delivered and transported by our members. So every year that volume is rising. If you can imagine in the last couple of years here in Ireland...
The amount of people that are living here now in comparison to what was here two years ago, all them people have to have goods transferred to and fro and that
That all has to be serviced. And that's done by our members. Well, listen, we will be speaking to government ministers and prospective ministers over the next while as governments are formed. So a question we can put to them about their willingness to set up this task force that the Irish Road Haulers Association would like to be a part of. Ger Highland is their president. Ger, thanks a million for coming in to us. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
The Hard Shoulder with Kieran Cudahy. With the MG Hybrid and Electric range. Weekdays from 4 on Newstalk.