Call to see Port of Cork plans

The Port of Cork authority is being asked to provide detailed plans of its proposals to acquire and develop the former IFI (Irish Fertiliser Industries) plant at Marino Point near Cobh.

County councillors are demanding that communities in Cork Harbour have a right to know exactly what’s going to happen at the potentially strategic industrial site.

The Irish Examiner recently revealed the port authority had been involved in a consortium which was expected to acquire the 114-acre site for around €8m and spend a further €10m developing it to handle oil, agri-feed and fertiliser shipping traffic and use the facility’s rail link for biomass freight.

It’s also expected that the port authority will use the Marino Point jetty to accommodate oil and gas field supply ships as well as exploration vessels. The Cobh-Cork rail-line also runs through the site.

Councillors, meanwhile, are seeking details about the port body’s plans and the likely timeframe for developing the site which IFI closed down in 2002, with the loss of 220 jobs.

It was the last of Cobh’s major industries after the town suffered an industrial battering in the 1980s and 90s. Initially opened as Nitrigin Eireann Teoranta in 1979, it was taken over eight years later by IFI in a joint venture with the British-based Imperial Chemical Industries.

At a meeting of the county council’s municipal authority, Cllr Michael ‘Frick’ Murphy secured widespread support when he requested the local authority write to the Port of Cork seeking far more detailed information on its plans and what it intended to do with the site which he described as “being in a desperate state”.

Cobh-based Cllr Kieran McCarthy went even further and suggested the former IFI buildings reminded him of “the aftermath of Hiroshima”.

He told fellow councillors that when planning permission was initially granted for fertiliser production, a condition of approval was in the event of the industry closing down, the land would be returned to a greenfield site — unless it was acquired for port-related activities.

Cllr Marcia D’Alton said what happens in the future at the Marino Point site was critical to communities in Passage West and Great Island. She said that, for years, the Port of Cork had made no secret it was interested in acquiring Marino Point.

“We need clarity on what they propose to do, what it will entail,” she said.

Mayor of County Cork, Cllr Seamus McGrath fully supported the call for more information, adding: “It’s important local communities get an up-to-date position.”