Dublin Port Is Here For a Reason - Chief Executive Barry O'Connell On Why It Has To Stay

27th October 2023

Dublin Port chief executive Barry O’Connell

Dublin Port chief executive Barry O’Connell had previously worked in eight different countries for Coca-Cola before he took up his new post a year ago this November.

The port has been investing in community projects, including the refurbished substation on East Wall Road, funding a new boat for Stella Maris, and some 16km of walkways and cycleways – it has just secured planning permission for the Liffey-Tolka section.

Dublin Port Company CEO Barry O’Connell alongside Alicia Weafer, Trudi Pepper, Emma Gannon and Niamh Kane of the Stella Maris Rowing Club’s Under-16 Girls Team, who take to the water on their new coastal rowing boat, the St Laurence II, sponsored by Dublin Port Company. The boat is named after the original St Laurence, which was built, owned and competed in by Dublin Port workers in the 1950s Photo: Tommy Dickson

Is all this activity genuine engagement or simply an effort to win public support for its 3FM master plan, which is due to be submitted for planning approval?

And what about the latest call by economist David McWilliams in The Irish Times for the port to move?

Listen to O’Connell's response in an interview for Wavelengths below

Afloat.ie · Dublin Port's Barry O'Connell

Published in Wavelength Podcast, River Liffey

Published in Wavelength Podcast

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Dublin Port

About The Author

Lorna Siggins

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Lorna Siggins is a print and radio reporter, and a former Irish Times western correspondent. She is the author of Search and Rescue: True stories of Irish Air-Sea Rescues and the Loss of R116 (2022); Everest Callling (1994) on the first Irish Everest expedition; Mayday! Mayday! (2004); and Once Upon a Time in the West: the Corrib gas controversy (2010). She is also co-producer with Sarah Blake of the Doc on One "Miracle in Galway Bay" which recently won a Celtic Media Award

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