Passage West is the forgotten town of my constituency of Cork South-Central. At its height in the 19th century it was the most desirable of areas and a centre for commerce in the general Cork harbour region. It was from here that the Sirius, the first steam boat to cross the Atlantic from Ireland, left.
Since then there seems to have been little or no change in the basic road infrastructure or planning and development to enhance the urban environment of Passage West. For this, many State authorities need to take responsibility. My colleague, Councillor Joe Snow, a member of what was Passage West Town Commissioners and a member of the town council since 1994, has raised many of these issues on regular occasions with the authorities concerned.
As a Member of this House, I am challenging the various Departments to use whatever influence they can to offer tax designation, soon to run out, to kick-start much needed development to the centre of Passage West. Many difficulties exist in bringing about that development and some impediments have been unenforced and historical. For instance, much of Passage West was designated as a Seveso risk zone due to the existence of the IFA plant at Marino Point, which has since closed with the loss of 200 jobs, many of them held by people from the Passage West area.
That put a dampener on modern development on the dock side of Passage West. There is a private dock in the centre of the town which, competing with the Port of Cork Company, is taking cargoes of the most unacceptable type – loose bulk cargoes. This included coal at one stage, though that has stopped, but still includes animal feeds and fertilisers. This takes place in close proximity to urban dwellings and the standard and quality of life of people living in the centre of Passage West has been immeasurably damaged as a result of this continued type of activity.
The owners and promoters of the dock site wish to use the land at that location in a more productive way. The existence of urban development tax designation for the site allows for the possibility of smaller commercial units and, in particular, residential units. There are planning concerns to overcome about density and height of likely developments but they can be overcome. The difficulty has been in making a development of any type on this site feasible. The Department of the Environment and Local Government, the Minister of State's own Department of Finance, which is responsible for tax designation, and the Department for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources need to operate together. For instance, the latter Department is asking for €3 million for in-fill of the bay to make overall development possible in Passage West. It is this lack of joined up thinking in Government circles that is particularly disadvantaging Passage West.
The other major difficulty is the fact that along with other changes in the 20th century, traffic has increased but there have been no changes to the road infrastructure. The cross-river ferry taking vehicles mainly from Cobh to Cork city has increased traffic. There is heavy vehicle traffic going to the private dock development and again there have been no changes. In the centre of the town there is an oval shaped junction where nine roads converge and on which traffic can turn in 17 different directions, making it worse than the Red Cow roundabout.
There is a reluctance to address this obvious impediment. If the area was revitalised, Government agencies could point to the value of public investment in achieving a town worth aspiring to.
I hope the Government will give consideration to giving the power and means for many of these changes to be initiated in Passage itself. Passage was a town commissioner centre and now has a town council, but lacks the enhanced powers of what used to be a UDC. The real problem is the lack of responsiveness from both county local authorities and Government agencies to the various requests of people who know the problems most intimately and are best able to solve them. I hope the Minister of State can take that strident message to his ministerial colleagues.
