Getting the goods part 1: Ireland's ports in the Brexit storm
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As Ireland struggles with the twin challenges of Covid-19 and adjusting to new supply chains since Brexit, in the first part of our a weekly series, Neil Michael meets the people who get the goods into Ireland.
Catching drug smugglers, laying Russian submarine detector alarms off the Scottish coast, and decommissioning North Sea oil wells might not be the sort of thing you would expect a Dublin Port Company pilot to have done.
But that is just some of the work , the country's first and only female pilot, has had to take on over the course of her working life.
She is part of a small army working around the clock in the country’s docks and airports.
It is the likes of her we all have to thank for helping get the €6 billion-€7bn or so of imports safely into the country every month.
Most of our clothes come from abroad, as do most of our shoes, bedding, and handbags.
Almost all of the fertilizers farmers use in the fields comes from outside the country, as does most of the fruit and vegetables we consume, and the vehicles we drive.
All our tobacco is imported, as is all the vegetable oil and fat we consume, and almost all our natural gas and most of the petroleum we use is also imported.
We also rely heavily on imported cereal, sugar, honey, electronics, oil, pharmaceuticals and petroleum.
Each week sees hundreds of ship movements in and out of the country.
The marine traffic is relentless, and Sarah’s job, and those of her colleagues in ports around the country, is like that of an air traffic controller. . . but for ships.
She is one of just 12 pilots who are involved in the navigation of around a quarter of the 46 ship movements in and out of quay walls in Dublin Port every day.
They don’t use pilots in Rosslare, partly because of the ease with which ship masters can access the port’s berths.
Added to that, the port has a tower that overlooks the berths and if someone needs help, controllers like can talk them into the harbour over the radio.
Like some of her colleagues, Sarah is a veteran of the Irish Naval Service, where the Meath native served from 2009 until 2015.
The highlight of her career was being the Officer on Watch on the LÉ Niamh when it was involved in the seizure of one of the largest ever haul of drugs in the history of the State.
Crew aboard the ship intercepted the yacht Makayabella about 300km off the south west coast of Ireland in September 2014 and seized bales of cocaine worth just under €300 million.
Previous jobs include working on the Irish Lights vessel, the ILV Granuaile, in 2016, where she served on and off until around 2000.
Before she joined Dublin Port last November, she worked as a dynamic positioning officer aboard ships involved in the decommission of oil wells in the North Sea.
Trying to communicate with the captains of ships coming into the port poses its own challenges when you are wearing a facemask and English would not be their first language.
Like her other colleagues, she also has to be ferried over in one of Dublin Port’s Pilot Cutters to the big ships as they arrive at the pilot boarding grounds in Dublin Bay.
Then, after the cutter comes alongside the ships, she has to clamber up a manila — or rope ladder — thrust over the vast hull of these ships while they are still moving.
She then joins the captain on the bridge and together they bring the ship in, navigating their way through currents and other potential obstacles.
Even a prevailing gust of wind can push the ships off course.
As well as a constant flow of ships in and out of the country’s ports, there is also a constant flow of freight flights in and out of Dublin Airport 15 minutes away.
While companies like American Airlines and United Airlines make up about 12 weekly flights, other companies like DHL, FedEx and UPS help make up about 10 flights that land every day.
DHL Express accounts for three of those flights each day, with one landing just after midnight and two landing early morning at 5.20 and then at 5.30 from East Midlands Airport, in the UK and from Leipzig, Germany.
So while you are sleeping, there is a good chance the clothes you ordered online a day or two previously are arriving on one of those distinctive yellow Airbus A300s.
And despite the fact that each flight contains more than 7,400 individual small parcel consignments — including PPE, Covid test results, as well as consumer goods — they can be ready for take-off with another load just 90 minutes later.
To hear DHL Express’s Ireland Customs and Aviation Manager explain the process, it seems easy enough.
“We do our delivery operation in the morning, we then process our collections from customers in the afternoon,” he says.
“And when all of those customers' shipments come back to the airport, we get them out that evening.”
Just as the movement of freight in and out of Ireland has its complexities, so too has air freight.
“It’s highly regulated, and while there are customs declarations to be looked after, there are also safety and security issues that need to be taken care of as well.”
The progress of ships along shipping lanes into and out of Irish waters are monitored by any one of a number of Naval Service vessels assigned to patrol the Irish coast every day.
It’s the Naval Service that makes sure these lanes stay open, and it’s people like who are in charge of operations to keep them open.
He was Captain of the LE George Bernard Shaw as it slipped out of its berth at Cork’s Naval Dockyards late last month for a three-week mission around the coast.
“Because we are an island nation, we rely very heavily on our sea lines of communication,” he told the before setting sail.
“And it is vital that we make sure they stay open.”
He recalls how back in 2004 an oil tanker lost power just south of the Tusker Rock, off the southeast coast of County Wexford and was drifting across towards nearby Carnsore Point.
“We were there at the time and towed the tanker away from danger,” he recalled.
“If the Irish Naval Services hadn’t been there, it could have been a major ecological disaster.
“And there have been many near misses like that, and lots that haven’t been reported.”
“A major incident in a choke point such as Dublin Port or Cork Harbour could cause a major economic and environmental impact.”
, Captain of the new Stena Estrid, and his crew have worked throughout the pandemic.
The ferry, which can accommodate 1,000 passengers and 120 cars, now carries mostly freight, a mixture of which is unaccompanied trailers and roll-on, roll-off traffic.
The 215-metre superferry came into service a few months before the pandemic and was expected to work on the Holyhead to Dublin route.
That has changed, and it now operates on the Rosslare to Cherbourg route, one of a growing number direct to Europe now operating out of the Wexford port.
Instead of holidaymakers packing Stena Estrid’s large corridors, bars and restaurants, it’s a much smaller number of lorry drivers.
And instead of cars, its ‘car decks’ are now mostly filled with huge articulated trucks and petrol tankers bringing goods in and out of the country.
Captain Roberts has found it a strange experience, but both he and his crew now just regard it as their “new normal”.
"It's just like the rest of the world,” he said.
“It's the new normal and everything and everybody changes what they have to do to facilitate the new requirements.
“This ship is very much passenger-orientated, so walking around a large ship like this with so few passengers — it is quite bizarre really.
As to how long he will continue to operate in Rosslare, he pauses to think. Bear in mind few foresaw the pandemic, which arrived just weeks after Stena launched two brand new ships.
With a certain degree of understatement, he replies: “There is no crystal ball with these things.”