A new draft National Ports Policy for Ireland has placed offshore wind at the front and centre of its ambitions to transform its ports along with improved cargo handling.

For more than a decade, Ireland’s ports policy has been largely about maintaining trade capacity and encouraging commercial self-sufficiency, but now it redefines them as strategic national infrastructure, ‘crucial to our economic well-being and a key enabler of our renewable energy future’, according to minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien.