Save Our Ferry: Part two of our exclusive interview with North Ayrshire Council Leader Joe Cullinane

Joe spoke about the metaphorical middle-man in the whole campaign, CalMac, and hopes that they can work with these employees to keep it in Ardrossan.

He said: “I think there is a bit of uncertainty for the employees of CalMac, if the ferry services moves to Troon there will be longer sailings, less sailings per day and presumably that will have a knock on effect on the number of jobs that are required and they will be facing that uncertainty. From my point of view, I’ve had discussions with some Trade Unions about the issue and I am looking at how we can work together in terms of supporting Ardrossan from that angle as well, that includes the Trade Unions who aren’t necessarily directly involved and have members employed by CalMac but, for example, Unison, who obviously have members who deliver services on Arran, council staff who deliver services on Arran and I think they see the value of keeping it in Ardrossan and having the staff that are employed by the council leaving the port that serves the council’s island.”

At the recent council meeting, a cross-party motion was carried to back Ardrossan and Joe spoke about the financial impact it could have and reiterated the points again because of the massive effect they could have, he said: “I think I said this during the council debate but our calculations are that if you’re a resident of Arran who works on the mainland and commutes five days a week, in terms of your foot passenger fares it would increase by about £300 a year, if you take the car to work, it’ll be about £2,500 a year which is a really significant amount of money, so I think that is a key issue as part of the campaign and that will also increase the cost of doing business on the island and the haulage costs of leaving from Troon would be a lot higher as well so there’s a lot of things that would affect the value of the ferry service for Arran, its residents and its businesses.”

Ardrossan could lose one or two of its three train stations if the service moves to Troon, this along with other transport issues are key to campaign in Ardrossan and Joe thinks they are very important.

He added: “I think Ardrossan Harbour Train Station is there to serve the ferry service, if you don’t have it, the train station becomes rather obsolete. We seen it at the tail end of last week that SPT are looking at how they can improve the train service for Arran by introducing a new service on a Sunday. Ardrossan Harbour offers an integrated transport system, there are very few examples of that, not just in Ayrshire but across the country and I think that is a really important point to make and I have listened to the stuff about the road argument being presented by the Troon campaign and I don’t think that adds up either, you’re about two or three minutes away from getting on the Three Towns Bypass and the bypass you can virtually go anywhere in the UK without leaving the motorway. 

“If there’s any benefit in terms of a journey time to Cunninghame House then it is absolutely minimal but the impact on people who don’t have a car would be quite significant.” 

If Ardrossan loses the service, when asked if a contingency plan would be put in place, Joe agreed and said that major steps would have to be taken to safeguard Ardrossan as a community. 

He said: “There would have to be and one of the discussions I would then have to have with the Transport Minister if he made that decision would be about how he is actually going to put in place something which will fill the gap for Ardrossan. I think that’s another thing he has to consider, if he is going to take that service away from Ardrossan, take it away from the most deprived community in Ayrshire, he has to do something to replace the economic impact, the jobs impact and how does it tie in with, what I say is my priority in reducing inequality and what he would probably also say, that reducing inequality is key for him and his government so how does that tie in with that?”