asked the Minister for Communications his plans for the development of Irish ports; and if he will comment on a recent submission from the CII on this matter.

A review of ports policy is in the course of being completed and I expect to publish this as part of a Green Paper on Transport Policy in the next few months. It would be premature, therefore, to make any comment on the CII submission beyond saying that it represents a useful input to the formulation of the policy proposals which I intend to set out in the Green Paper. I look forward to the participation of the CII and other interests in the discussion on these proposals in due course.

Will the Minister agree, for example, that decisions are often subject to local political pressures and, in some instances, are not based on commercial or economic criteria? Does he agree with that strong statement by the CII?

I would go perhaps even further. I will not say all investments with regard to ports have been because of local pressure but most of them have been. I do not think most of them could have been justified on commercial criteria alone.

Will the Minister agree that local pressures are not necessarily wedded to a lack of commercial or economic criteria?

Not necessarily. However, soon after I came to office I thought this area needed to be looked at. There did not seen to be any real framework within which these matters were assessed. That is why I initiated a review of port policy. Very often port developments arise because of pressure of a local nature and because of the need to upgrade the status of the local port without regard to the overall national need for it. We have a great excess of port facilities compared to the trade that comes into and goes out of this country.

The study mentions six ports which do 63 per cent of the trade in the country. In view of the emphasis that the CII report places on these, will the Department be establishing a hierarchy of ports for the future development?

I would not wish to anticipate the review of policies that I have mentioned. I expect to be in a position to issue a Green Paper on national transport policy within a few months which will include a very significant section on the ports policy. Perhaps we should wait for that and then I would welcome the Deputy's thoughts on it.