Labour Transport Spokesperson Tommy Broughan T.D. has asked Transport Minister Noel Dempsey to immediately publish the Dublin Port National Development Plan.

Deputy Broughan said, "Minister Dempsey launched a strategic review of Dublin Port more than a year ago. One of the central objectives of the Minister’s consultation process was to determine the future of Dublin Port including addressing the issues of port capacity and the likely impacts of the development of a new Drogheda Port at Bremore.

"Minister Dempsey has now informed me that he has received the final report of the Dublin Port National Development Plan and he intends to "publish its findings in the near future."

"There are critical issues at stake not just for the Dublin Port Company itself but for the more than 1.5 million residents of the Greater Dublin Area and the Mid-Leinster region if the report proposes even a partial reallocation of Dublin Port’s heavy goods traffic. Environment Minister John Gormley has separately been running his own consultation process on the future of Dublin Bay which significantly overlaps with Minister Dempsey’s. Both of these reports should now be made public as a matter of urgency."

Deputy Broughan has also called on Minister Dempsey to utilize all of the industrial relations mechanisms of the state to urgently resolve the ongoing dispute at Marine Terminals Limited (MTL) in Dublin Port where 42 workers have been on strike for the past month