I am loathe to criticise Belfast Harbour, one of the few parts of Northern Ireland that works.
Nevertheless, the expansion plan it published last week for its cruise ship business demands a wider discussion.
Other cities around the world are increasingly restricting cruise ships or banning them outright. While that does not mean Belfast should follow suit, there are some obvious challenges on the horizon and a window of opportunity to address them.
Over the next five years, Belfast Harbour will invest £90 million to dredge a channel and build a quay for the largest cruise ships afloat.
Belfast is already the UK and Ireland’s second-busiest cruise port after Southampton, with 300,000 people arriving on 150 ships every year, an average of 2,000 passengers per vessel.
The harbour wants to increase that to 200 ships with higher average capacity. By the end of the decade half a million people could be arriving on ships carrying more than 7,000 passengers each, with several in port at the same time at peak season.
Pollution is one of the main reasons other cities are turning against cruise ships.
This is little discussed in Northern Ireland, perhaps because we are making such a mess of the environment ourselves, but it is bound to become a more glaring issue as air pollution from other transport sources is reduced.
Incredibly, the average cruise ship in Europe emits as much sulphur dioxide as five million cars. Soot and heavy metal emissions are also horrendous. Most ships burn bunker oil – the toxic sludge left over at the bottom of the refinery after everything else has been boiled off.
One solution to this problem is an onshore power supply (OPS), connecting ships to the electricity grid so that at least they do not have to run their engines while docked.
Belfast Harbour says it hopes to “explore” an OPS if government accounting rules are changed to allow it to borrow for this and other investments. Many other ports around Europe have made similar commitments but progress never seems to take off.
OPS is admittedly a difficult problem as there has been no standardisation towards it – there is no agreed ‘plug size’ for ships. A large cruise ship consumes as much electricity as a large town, so equipping a quayside to power several is a major undertaking.
Southampton has had OPS since 2021 but most ships will not use it because running their engines is cheaper.
The other approach to pollution is cleaner fuel. Some new cruise ships are powered by liquid natural gas, which has begun a debate in the industry about whether OPS is really necessary.
Belfast Harbour needs to bring this debate into the open. Public health and serious money are at stake.
The objections to cruise ships that tend to grab the headlines concern too many tourists spending too little money.
Last week, the mayor of Nice banned all ships with over 900 passengers. “Cruises that pollute, that dump their low-cost clientele who consume nothing but leave their waste behind, have no place here,” he said.
Belfast seems far from this level of saturation and exasperation. Cruise passengers are very welcome in the city and the many other areas of Northern Ireland they travel to on excursions.
But what is our capacity limit, what can be be done to increase it, and how much do we want to increase it? These questions are scarcely asked.
UK and Ireland cruising could grow significantly as other destinations cap numbers. Belfast could be swamped, which might annoy residents; in turn, Belfast could disappoint visitors by failing to provide enough facilities, squandering a potential economic bonanza.
Iceland introduced a £14 per passenger daily fee for cruise ships this year. Dozens of ships have cancelled as a result.
It would be better to lure people ashore to fund new attractions. Belfast lacks museums and galleries; admission fees from cruise passengers could help to build them. More indoor attractions would make tourism less seasonal, sustaining jobs and businesses when cruises stop over the winter.
Belfast Harbour could develop some of these amenities, as it did with the Titanic centre.
One of the harbour’s hopes for getting passengers to spend more is for Belfast to become a start and end point for cruises.
This would require more flights, hotels and public transport. Are there any plans to provide them?
If other cities do not want this business, it is Belfast’s for the taking. There could be great rewards for getting these issues right.