Harbours and Piers Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-24 ============================================================ Mark Duffy (FG), Labour Panel I welcome the Minister of State to the floor of Seanad Éireann. Something I, along with my colleague, Senator O'Donovan, have raised continuously, is the maintenance of piers, harbours and slipways across the country. Indeed, in my home county of Mayo, it is something I have advocated for as a county councillor, and more recently as a Member of the Oireachtas. Something that sadly has borne out our worst fears was a recent tragedy at Belderrig pier, where Joachim McNulty sadly lost his life. I have met Joachim’s daughter, Joanna, his wife, Geraldine, and the Belderrig community, who have been immense in using this as an opportunity to say "No more" and to insist on better standards of safety at piers and harbours. What I would love to see come from today is a message to all chief executives of county councils to have safety audits on all of our piers and harbours to identify exactly what needs to be done to improve safety, lighting and maintenance of piers, slipways and harbours, to ensure that tragedies like Buncrana or more recently Belderrig never happen again and that all measures are taken to protect them. I would welcome the Minister of State’s engagement on this. I ask him to meet with the McNulty family and in particular Joanna at some stage. She is working on a petition to encourage support to make sure that this vision of safety at all of our piers and harbours is realised. I wish to acknowledge the work of Darren Forde. He is a local innovator in County Mayo who is doing great work to create proposals that will help make safety measures on piers a reality. Senators will not be found wanting when it comes to supporting the Minister of State in his efforts to request funding to deliver much-needed investment in piers and harbours. The Minister of State understands the importance of this work. There is a lot of jeopardy as well as dangerous moments at piers, which can happen very quickly. A brilliant legacy for us all would be to support the Minister of State and the McNulty family, in memory of their late father, to make sure that such a tragedy never happens again and that our harbours and piers are safe. I look forward to hearing the reply. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:46+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-24