New Waterford bridge to be transported on barge from Belgium
A 207 metre long bridge, as part of the multi-million euro development of Waterford's north quays, is to be transported in four sections by sea-going barges from Belgium by the end of this month.
Last month, Waterford City and County Council granted planning permission for 350 new homes as part of the first phase of the North Quays Strategic Development Zone (SDZ).
Advertisement
Permission was granted to Harcourt Developments for the mixed-use development which also includes office accommodation, ground floor creche and retail, a 160-bedroom hotel and conference centre, 163-room aparthotel, retail units on the ground floor of residential blocks.
Public plazas, a riverside boardwalk and greenway will also be constructed in what the council describes as 'high quality public realm spaces.'
The bridge will be transported from Ghent, via the Ghent–Terneuzen Canal, English Channel and Irish Sea to Belview Port and ultimately to the Waterford North Quays site. The delivery schedule is subject to final inspections as well as weather and sea conditions.
Once transported to Waterford, the rigging, lifting and installation procedures for the bridge will take around a week to complete. The fast-tracking of integration works as part of construction of the Development Zone will facilitate the opening of the bridge to the public by the end of next year 2026.
Advertisement
Details of a bridge naming public consultation are to be announced in the coming weeks.
Michael Quinn, Director of Economic Development, Waterford City and County Council, outlined that works are continuing in Ferrybank with the realigned Abbey Road and Dock Road are due to be completed in July and October this year.
Mr Quinn outlined that the transport hub is 'progressing well' with mechanical and electrical installation, platforms and landscaping ongoing.
Works to the platforms and rail track are continuing, and the internal building fit out and external public entrance plaza at Dock Road will commence in the coming months.
Advertisement
The transport hub is expected to be fully complete by the middle of next year, with final commissioning and opening by Irish Rail in early 2027.
'The steel deck superstructure for the sustainable transport bridge, fabricated and fitted out at Victor Buyck Steel Construction's production plant in Ghent, Belgium is due to be delivered by the end of May,' Mr Quinn added.
The direct benefit to Waterford of the investment in the SDZ site is anticipated to be in excess of €350m over the next six years, the council highlighted, with 200 people employed during construction and upwards of 1,500 jobs to be created following completion of phase one of the development.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
9 hours ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE One in four senior bank staff say closing branches 'isn't a concern'
More than a quarter of senior banking professionals say the closure of bank branches isn't a major concern for their business, figures seen by This is Money reveal. While as many as 27 per cent of senior bank staff said branch closures weren't a challenge to their business, the same cannot be said for the public. There is growing concern over access to bank branches, as more find themselves living in bank and cash machine deserts. Some 60 per cent of bank customers said closures have made it more difficult to speak to a member of staff, according to the data from credit information provider CRIF. A majority also said banks are now less focused on serving and looking after their customers than they were five years ago. A third said the increasing numbers of bank closures have made it more confusing to get what they need form their bank because they are now unable to speak to bank staff directly and instead often have to find information on their website. As many as 13million banking customers still rely on physical branches, recent figures from the Financial Conduct Authority reveal. Sara Costantini, regional director for the UK and Ireland at CRIF, said: 'Financial services have changed rapidly over the last decade, as people continue to embrace digital banking and manage multiple aspects of their finances online. 'The knock-on impact of this has been the reduction in physical, in-person banking services. 'While many working in the sector don't see this as a major challenge to their business, bank branch reductions are continuing to fuel concerns over the quality of customer services and what further closures may mean for the future.' How many bank branches are closing? According to data from Which?, some 379 bank closures have been earmarked for 2025, with a further 22 already planned for 2026. This is despite rules brought in last year that banks must prove to regulators that local communities will still have free cash access if they close their branch. Since 2015, there have been as many as 6,377 branch closures across the UK, meaning two thirds of all the branches open in 2015 have now closed. Bank closures are increasingly giving rise to the creation of banking deserts. Data from Nomis shows that in 2024 there are as many as 15 'grey zones' in the UK. North East Derbyshire, a district with more than 100,000 residents, has no bank branches whatsoever. In the CRIF survey, a fifth of consumers said they are concerned about the closure of more bank branches over the coming five years. Costantini said: 'The findings highlight the difficult tightrope that banks now need to walk, balancing the need to ensure their digital services remain cutting edge and up to scratch, which has become a competitive area for so many, without losing the personal touch that more traditional services offer.' Meanwhile, its not just bank branches that are shutting their doors. Between October 2019 and January 2024, there was 30 per cent reduction in the size of the UK's ATM network, likewise creating ATM dead zones and stifling Britons' access to cash. Some 23,000 ATM's are expected to be closed, leaving just 15,000 across the country, according to the UK's ATM network, Link.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
Trump adds Ireland to trade ‘blacklist'
Donald Trump has added Ireland to the White House's official blacklist of countries for the nation's trade surplus with the US. Ireland joins fellow new entrant Switzerland in the US treasury's bad books, on a list that includes regular US targets including China, Japan, Germany, Vietnam and South Korea. Appearing on the watchlist puts Ireland, whose dominant industries are pharmaceuticals and technology, at the front of the queue of countries likely to attract Mr Trump's ire. If escalated, it can open the door to tariffs and other sanctions. The US president has previously singled out Ireland as a country whose trade surplus hurts the US economy. 'We do have a massive deficit with Ireland, because Ireland was very smart. They took our pharmaceutical companies away,' he told Micheál Martin, the Irish Taoiseach, in the Oval Office in March. He even considered putting a 200pc tariff on US pharmaceutical imports from Ireland. 'We don't want to do anything to hurt Ireland. We do want fairness,' he said. Ireland's goods exports to the US surged by 49pc in the first quarter of 2025 from the same period a year earlier, the country's statistics office reported this week, as exporters scrambled to get shipments off before any of Mr Trump's tariffs kicked in. The export surge fuelled a 9.7pc bounce in Ireland's GDP in the first quarter. Irish exports are under dire threat from Mr Trump's potential tariff of 50pc on goods imports from the EU. Dublin and other European capitals are now sweating on Brussels' negotiations with Washington to avoid this levy hitting the bloc in early July. On Friday, the German central bank warned that if the two sides did not strike a deal, Europe's biggest economy would remain mired in recession until 2027. German data issued on Friday showed a 1.4pc drop in factory output in April and a 10.3pc slump in German exports to the US from a month earlier, as pre-tariff, front-end loading of trans-Atlantic shipments came to a halt. The two sides' trade negotiators met in Paris this week. Maros Sefcovic, the EU trade commissioner, said afterwards that talks were 'advancing in the right direction at pace', while Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, declared himself 'pleased that negotiations are advancing quickly'. They have slightly more than four weeks until the expiry of a 90-day pause on Mr Trump's tariffs on July 9. The president has frequently expressed hostility towards the EU over its trade policies, but was peaceable towards a visiting Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, at a meeting in the Oval Office on Thursday. 'We'll end up hopefully with a trade deal,' he told reporters. 'I'm OK with the tariffs, or we make a deal with the trade.' The US treasury's report on Friday – a twice-yearly 'Monitoring List of major trading partners whose currency practices and macroeconomic policies merit close attention' – had some advice for both Germany and Ireland. Dublin was urged to focus on boosting activity in its domestic economy', to help Ireland 'address its over-reliance' on export-focused multinational companies. Berlin was told that Germany's unbalanced trade with the US was caused by German businesses and consumers failing to open their wallets and spend their savings.
BreakingNews.ie
a day ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Trump administration adds Ireland to 'monitoring list' for currency manipulation
US president Donald Trump's new administration has added Ireland to its "monitoring list" of countries warranting close attention for currency manipulation. In the first semi-annual currency report of the second Trump term, the Treasury Department said no major US trading partner manipulated its currency in 2024 but it nonetheless added Ireland and Switzerland to its monitoring list for extra foreign exchange scrutiny. Advertisement Countries that meet two of the criteria – a trade surplus with the US of at least $15 billion (€13 billion), a global account surplus above 3 per cent of GDP and persistent, one-way net foreign exchange purchases – are automatically added to the list. Ireland and Switzerland were added due to their large trade and current account surpluses with the US. While it did not label China a currency manipulator for now despite "depreciation pressure" facing its currency, the yuan, the department issued a stern warning to China, saying it "stands out among our major trading partners in its lack of transparency around its exchange rate policies and practices." "This lack of transparency will not preclude Treasury from designating China if available evidence suggests that it is intervening through formal or informal channels to resist (yuan) appreciation in the future," Treasury said in a statement. It said China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Germany, Ireland and Switzerland were on its monitoring list for extra foreign exchange scrutiny. Advertisement The Swiss National Bank on Friday denied being a currency manipulator, but said it would continue to act in Switzerland's interests as the strong Swiss franc helped push inflation into negative terrain last month. "The SNB does not engage in any manipulation of the Swiss franc," it said. "It does not seek to prevent adjustments in the balance of trade or to gain unfair competitive advantages for the Swiss economy." Trump in his first term labelled China a manipulator in August 2019, a move made then – as now – amid heightened US-China trade tensions. The Treasury Department dropped the designation in January 2020 as Chinese officials arrived in Washington to sign a trade deal with the US. Thursday's report was released hours after Trump spoke with China's leader Xi Jinping for the first time since returning to the White House amid an even more tense trade standoff between the world's two largest economies, and more recently a battle over critical minerals. Advertisement Business Economic growth rises by 'unusual' 9.7%, driven by... Read More The countries struck a 90-day deal on May 12th to roll back some of the triple-digit, tit-for-tat tariffs they had placed on each other since Trump's January inauguration. The latest report covers the final full year of the administration of Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, who over his four-year term never labeled any trading partner a currency manipulator but raised similar concerns over China's behaviour and lack of transparency. Last year was marked generally by broad-based dollar strengthening, with the US currency gaining 7 per cent in 2024 against a basket of major trading partners' currencies. That could change over the course of this year, with the dollar already down by roughly 9 per cent since Trump returned to the White House and launched a trade war that has global investors rethinking their commitments to US assets.
