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MEMBERS OF CORK County Council have written to their local government minister urging State intervention to save the Cork-Swansea ferry route.
Councillors led by Cathaoirleach Tim Lombard (FG) are seeking a meeting with Simon Coveney urging the government to invest in saving the route, whose operator West Cork Tourism Co-Operative Society Ltd says it cannot raise the funds necessary to run the route.
The company ceased operations a fortnight ago and went into receivership, ending the ferry service with the loss of 78 jobs.
“Realistically, Cork is the second biggest city in the Republic, and it’s very important that it has a ferry link with the United Kingdom,” Lombard told TheJournal.ie.
“In the last two years, it has contributed 153,000 visitors, directly to Cork – the spend [Bord Fáilte] are estimating is in the region of €30 million.”
Lombard said he was seeking government intervention to purchase the ferry service from the receiver – possibly in conjunction with local authorities, or with private equity.
While Coveney was being written to because he was the minister closest to the area, he is also the minister for the marine. Councillors have also written to transport minister Leo Varadkar to seek his involvement.
As a Cork man, please don’t “save” the Swansea ferry. Bailouts are bad whether they’re for banks or for ferries.
How can they honestly believe that a Cork – Swansea service could be viable? Cork Airport prvides a number of daily services to a number of UK cities. However, the killer blow is the upgraded N25 from Cork to Rosslare with the Waterford motorway standard bypass. Logic dictates that travellers will take the quickest and cheapest and most convenient route. Unfortunately that is not Cork to Swansea by sea.
The long route isn’t always not preferable.
If you can travel overnight, you keep moving when you would otherwise be sleeping and the extra cost is balanced by not having to pay for hotel accommodation.
I’ve done this myself in Italy. I drove from Naples to Sicily using the short 30 minute boat to get across. On the way back, I took a ferry the whole way from Palermo to Naples. I got on the boat in Palermo at 9pm. At 7am the next morning I was in Naples. 6-7 hours of driving saved and all while I slept.
@chris – if what you were saying was true, this thread wouldn’t exist
If we keep asking government to pay for or subsidise non-commercially viable enterprises then we can’t be surprised when we don’t have enough money to pay for core functions, like nurses, Gardai and teachers.
Look at CIE, the state-monopoly transport company. Huge losses despite massive direct subsidies from government, inefficient and ineffective service and price hikes every year without fail.
Well, then let’s get rid of the banks, the railroads, the airlines and the hospitals, schools, defense forces, the Garda, tear up the roads and ….sorry, you can’t park that jaunting cart here…none of those make a profit. There are things, like infrastructure and essential public services that are not profit-making. We know that, and we choose to finance them anyway. That’s what civilizations do. They pay for projects that benefit the the population at large by taking a tiny bit from everyone to pay for it. Are we to burn the libraries and museums as well? Sell off all the arts and national treasures? They don’t make a profit. Turn Newgrange into a fast food restaurant?
Hi Seamus – If you read my comment, you’ll see that I specifically say we we need to keep off non-core spending in favour of core spending like teachers for schools, nurses for hospitals, Gardai for our streets.
If government took this over they’d only increase the losses. If we call in government for every business that can’t stand on its own feet we’d be in a deeper hole than today.
We have core goals for government that must be met. When it comes to transport, there is no rule that we need to have Public Service Obligation at a massive loss. Indeed, Dublin Bus was asked to separate their PSO loss making routes from their profit making routes for more transparency, so they couldn’t hide general inefficiency under the blanket header of “The national good.” That was in the mid-1980′s and surprise surprise it hasn’t happened.
If there is a viable ferry service to Cork – perhaps a smaller boat – then the private sector should be left to set it up. If government can help – say, lower a tax or similar – then go for it. Otherwise, people wishing to visit Cork can use the airport or the roads or the railways, all paid for and maintained through our taxes already.
Id love to see Cork Councillors put together a proposal to save this service, fully costed and practical. Its all too easy for politicians to call for tis or that, but not backing it up with costs, feasibility or practical workings!
Without using my Money please
If the money for this came from locally raised taxes (such as a council tax) would the Cork city councilors use this money? I’m not sure the people of Cork would be prepared to cough up the additional money required.
The Cork-Swansea route was a loss maker when operated by the state ferry company (B+I Line) it has fared no better in the private sector. Unfortunately it is not a viable route.
This is tragic! If they don’t allow this service to run during the summer months at least, when I’m sure is it’s busiest time, the South West of the country will definitely suffer in terms of tourism revenue!
How will it suffer? It’s a single service that brings a handful of people in, look at Cork Airport, it’s rolling them in and I’m sure the traffic that needed the ferry will simply transfer to the Rosslare routes!
Lets call a spade, a spade here. The Cork-Swansea ferry is a business. It is obviously not a profitable one, so it needs to close down. The country is already holding up enough loss making businesses. Sure, it is devastating for the employees of the ferry etc but we can’t keep bailing out companies that aren’t profitable. The whole country, in itself is a loss making entity, so it simply isn’t viable.
Cork airport also loses money, should it be shut down?
Of course try and save the ferry, but then for the summer season only.
Would be nice if the owners provided residents of this country with the jobs so the money might go back into our economy.
As a Corkonian living in the UK, I have never chosen to use the Cork Swansea route.
10hours on a sea crossing that can be done in 90mins from Holyhead to Dublin or not a lot more from Fishguard/Pembroke to Rosslare, really doesn’t make sense, either economically or with regard to time. Cork airport offers a good service to most parts of the UK. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that Cork Harbour is not on the Irish Sea and therefore a journey too far from the UK by ferry.
You see that requires logical thinking which has two elements:
1) Logic
2) Thinking
Unfortunately, local governments and the national government don’t have either of those two elements within them.
They wrote to Leo the li&r, good luck with that. Unless it has a German stamp it hasn’t got much chance of even been opened
We should keep in mind that those 78 workers didn’t take their wages and use them to build a house in Florida like bankers do. They didn’t take their wages and buy cocaine and Czech prostitutes with them. They didn’t use their wages to bribe politicians, to finance criminal enterprises, to launder money from drug transactions.
No, the workers spent their money in the local economies of Cork. They bought food, clothing, cars, houses, music lessons, and all the things that bankers never buy. The state subsidy was re-invested into the community, or in a way, it was a give-back of taxes to the people through those workers. Bankers take the money to Switzerland and America. They could give a shit about the local economy. You don’t see Fitzpatrick shopping at the English Market, do you?
But the state bailed out the bankers, and dropped the ferry workers into the Irish sea.
Not to be a pain in the arse, but how do you know what and where the 78 workers spent their money on?
From my one experience of travelling on it, I didn’t come across one Irish or Welsh crew member. I doubt a huge amount of money was spent in Cork or Swansea.
People still travel by ferry, how quaint.
The government doesn’t need a bloody ferry route, we’ve much better things to be worrying about.
This is a fucking disgrace this is not even a drop in the ocean what the fucking bankers lost , we will paying for generations for what they did to us , and the lost revenue to local economy is devastating , a shame !!!!!
You are correct. These are the social consequences of a corrupt partnership between capitalists and elected thugs.
Here we go again , Irish people unable to grasp that Ireland is in fact an Island , and without subsidised airports and seaports we would be stuck here unless families are planning to swim to Florida and other destinations.
The Cork – Swansea route IS commercially viable , Swansea Cork Ferries LTD was profitable to the end , they were offered tripple the value of their ship as it was needed in a hurry and so sold it , they then were unable to secure a replacment ship , and with a big lump sum in the bank called it a day.
Sea connections are vital to Ireland as 75% of everything bought in shops arrived on SHIPS and 90% of our exports leave on SHIPS.
It is estimated that the tax payer will have to cough up €30 million to make up the gap in revenue caused by the loss of the direct sea route between Munster and Wales , and for anyone thinking that Rosslare can make up the shortfall , well bad news people , Stena Line has sold its Rosslare fast ferry to Korea so no more 99 minute crossings , and both Stena Line and Irish Ferries are talking about a 25% fare hike (as there is now no competition) that hike will also apply to freight so expect to see that cost added on to the cost of imported goods in shops soon.
Fastnet Line actually had 125 employees , 78 of them WERE Irish (they have since joined the dole ques so more tax payers money needed here) yet everyone is happy to travel with Cyprus based Irish Ferries who have NOT ONE Irish employee and only a few short years ago had protests against its treatment of Irish workers by sending hired heavies aboard their ships to forcebly remove its Irish staff in order to replace them with non-union , non-EU crews working for €2 per hour , funny how short peoples memories can be , and many UK nationals who own holiday homes in West Cork are now contemplating dumping them onto the market (therby depressing local property values further , so even more tax payers money needed to prop up NAMA’ massive Cork portfolio which is currently sinking in value)
The only time the Swansea -Cork sea route was not commercially viable is when it was operated by B&I line , and that is in dispute as B&I were accused fo cooking the books and deliberatly running down the service to support the politically unpopular relocation from Cork to Rosslare (which again came under scrutiny as it was claimed that this was only done because Rosslare ferry port is owned by CIE who were sturggeling with it and B&I being another semi-state were drafted in to bail out CIE)
The reason Fastnet Line collapsed was because it hired the usual brand of know it all Irish managers who simply had no clue what they were doing and for very high salaries drove the company into the ground.
If you really want to talk about wasting tax payers money look no further than Cork Airport , passenger numbers down 44% in 3 years and as passenger numbers have fallen below what they were before the new terminal was built , the €160 million new terminal was actually not needed after all , and the Fact that Cork Airport is controlled by its biggest competitor (Dublin Airport) the fact that Cork Airport is the 3rd most expensive airport in Europe to land at (and for the massive expense they still expect tourists to exit the planes by means of climbing down a ladder and walking across the runway in the pouring rain)
I was really glad the the Swansea Cork ferry started up again.. living in Cork it was a great way to get to the UK but when I went tks book a crossing last year I nearly had a heart attack over the prices they were charging. I’m sorry to say they priced themselves out of the market.
The ferry service was supurb when it was run by Swansea Cork Ferries. Unfortunatly in my opinion Fastnet line bought the wrong ship: too big, very problematic, no foot passenger gangway in Swansea. Also as mentioned above prices were too high, both for travel and onboard. Superferry was a fine vessel, although she is too old for British waters now there is plenty of simmilar tonnage floating about, many of which coverted Japaneese car carriers just like Superferry. This route does have a future and who better to take it forward than the people from Swansea Cork Ferries who made it work for so many years.
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