Below is the text of two more Dail questions which have been recently asked about the ferry service available to the islands of Roaring Water Bay.
Regular readers will remember that last time the questions related to the delay in awarding the Sherkin passenger ferry service contract and to the investigation of overloading of ferries to islands and their manning levels.
This time Jim O’keefeFG was the questioner. Previously it was Joanna Tuffy of Labour.
The Cape Clear and Sherkin Branch of the Irish Farmers’ Association, as part of seven points put to Eamon O’Cuiv (Minister DCRGA King Eamon of the Arans and all Islands of Ireland),
Expressed extreme concern on this same topic back in April at the Comhdhail AGM, at which the Minister and members of the National Office of the IFA were guest speakers.
After the meeting a Cape farmer was assured by no lesser a mortal than King Eamon, that a subsidy for cargo for Roaring Water Bay had already been under discussion. The implication, we are sure intended, was that there would be some kind of a positive outcome in the near future.
However, in May, a senior civil servant from the King’s department told a meeting on Cape Clear that there was no chance of a separate Cargo subsidy before the end of the next five years but that the operator of the Naomh Ciaran would arrange the movement of all cargoes for the island and that if he were not able to do this himself, then he would make other arrangements to have them brought in.
I’ll leave you to read the questions and answers and then make a little more comment on them.
Ceist Dála
Uimh: 421
27 Samhain 2007
To ask the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs if, in view of difficulties and inconsistencies which have arisen in the award of public
service contracts for ferries and cargo to and from offshore islands, he will have an independent review of the process whereby those contracts are awarded.
- Jim O'Keeffe.
Tag: 31173/07
FREAGRA SCRÍOFA
AN tAIRE GNÓTHAÍ POBAIL, TUAITHE AGUS GAELTACHTA (AN tUASAL ÉAMON Ó CUÍV, T.D.):-
I do not accept the Deputy’s assertion that there have been difficulties and inconsistencies in the award of island passenger and cargo ferry contracts.
Contracts for island transport services are awarded by my Department following rigorous evaluation by my officials of tenders received, in accordance with
relevant national and European .Union procurement guidelines and in consultation, where necessary, with independent procurement consultants and the Office
of the Attorney General.
Ceist Dála
Uimh: 420
27 Samhain 2007
To ask the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs the annual subsidy payable for the transport of cargo to and from islands (details supplied).
- Jim O'Keeffe.
Tag: 31172/07
FREAGRA SCRÍOFA
AN tAIRE GNÓTHAÍ POBAIL, TUAITHE AGUS GAELTACHTA (AN tUASAL ÉAMON Ó CUÍV, T.D.):-
My Department does not pay cargo subsidies in respect of the islands numbered 2, 3, and 4 in the details supplied by the Deputy.
With reference to island number 1, my Department currently has a five year contract in place with a private operator for the carriage of both passengers
and cargo. The annual cost of this contract, which commenced on 1 March 2007, is as follows:
Year - Cost
1 - €214,823
2 - €229,690
3 - €246,336
4 - €263,416 *
5 - €285,583 *
Total - €1,239,848
- The annual cost of the subsidy may increase in years 4 and 5, depending on whether the option of providing a new vessel is exercised by the service operator.
As you probably guessed, if you have any knowledge of Roaring Water Bay, the island with the subsidy, for in fact a mixed passenger and cargo ferry, is Cape Clear, whereas the rest of the group get no support.
Obviously the Minister/King sees no inconsistency in only one out of four islands receiving a subsidy for cargo. Odd!
Well why then was it the Cape Farmers who were looking for a subsidy when the lucky island is already Cape?
The Naomh Ciaran can’t and won’t carry an increasing variety of the cargoes needed on Cape Clear. For instance, the ferry serves a farming community but can’t carry hay and won’t carry silage! The numbers of animals that can be carried at any time has been severely restricted and much of the bulk building material is now brought in by trucks on the ro-ro ferry operated by Vincent O’Driscoll, who takes the cargo to the other RWB islands.
The Naomh carries day to day shopping and household goods, in the same way that the “passenger” ferries to the other islands do.
May be this is why the Minister/King felt he could say that there was no inconsistency between the islands. The Cape ferry provides an extended everyday goods service, better than the other RWB islands can get from their subsidised ferries, but not really significantly different.
If that is the case, and not just a stubborn rebuttal, of the “black is white if I say so” variety, then perhaps there was some slight whiff of deception in the claim that our cargo subsidy had been under discussion and in calling what we have a passenger and cargo subsidy. I leave that to the reader to decide.
If we are looking for the “consistency” that Eamon asserts exists between islands, how about the other Cork islands?
Well doesn’t look like consistency to me: Bere Island has two ferries and there the subsidy, so “emara News” is told, is split 30% 70%; Whiddy has a cable car, which doesn’t carry animals or heavy goods, and anyone who thinks they have seen animals going aloft, may have been hallucinating or seeing an “inconsistency” that doesn’t exist; The remaining non-RWB island has a very small population and I have no reliable information to hand.
Ok then, how about the King’s own constituency, the Arans?
“There is no inconsistency” in the Aran islands having a separate cargo boat which receives a subsidy to serve all the islands. I’m not sure if this rates with Queen Victoria who so disbelieved the possibility of the inconsistency of women finding other women sexually attractive that she passed a law against male homosexuality but not against female, or is it more like one of Lewis Carroll’s characters, in the Alice books, who says “words mean exactly what I want them to mean.”
I don’t think I would be unfair if I suggested that all this flimflam from the Minister, when the Cape farmers and those of the rest of the population who need a truck load of: sand, gravel, wood, blocks etc., and who have been told that they must wait five years for any kind of security of service or price, is being greeted by cries of “off with his head!” as Lewis Carroll’s red queen would have put it.
As to the absence of difficulty in awarding contracts, I suppose it depends what you count as a difficulty.
The Cape Contract was delayed “to improve the efficiency of the tendering process”, despite the delay neither tender was “satisfactory”, but perhaps the Minister/king or his advisors expected this result and just may be it allowed them a route into talking to only one of the contenders and perhaps the delay in actually signing that contract, when it had been “given” to the current operator had something to do with facilitating changes from the original proposal, and perhaps the need to hold the vote for the Monitoring Committee Island Reps at a time when it was certain that the majority of the younger voters weren’t on the island, might just have had baring on the election of two people with a singular lack of knowledge of the ferry or its operation and possibly with personal reasons to curry the operators favour; I couldn’t possibly comment.
Still less could I comment, though I must remark on the possibly coincidental circumstance, of the new Sherkin ferry contract being delayed “to improve administrative efficiency”. Maybe the DCRGA are just trying to be consistent?
The one thing I will comment on though, is that there are many in the community of Cape Clear who are a lot less happy to travel this winter on a ferry, which seems to have chronic maintenance problems, has had its crew reduced and is under investigation for an overloading incident, which wasn’t its first since March.
The rumoured €50,000 fine for taking the Naomh Ciaran off service to run trips to the Fastnet, if true, isn’t much comfort to us as the gale wails around the houses and we wonder: when our goods will come in from the creamery, or whether we will be able to leave the island, or our loved ones return, safely.
Ed - Editor
