In the video, Adrian Molnar leans across the News. studio desk and makes the point he came to make: the communities along the coast are finished waiting quietly. The chair of the Coastal Residents’ Council joined presenter Clara Benning on Thursday evening to talk through a week dominated by delayed flood defenses, a hospital ward closure and a heated budget debate in the National Assembly.
“We won’t accept silence,” Molnar said in the interview. “When a project that protects 40,000 people is pushed back by two years, the people affected deserve to hear it from a minister, not read it in a footnote.”
A barrier on hold
The comment refers to the Port Alden harbor barrier, a system of movable gates meant to shield the old town and the ferry terminal from winter storm surges. The transport ministry confirmed this week that construction will not begin before spring, after the second tender drew no compliant bids.
Molnar told Benning that residents of the lower harbor district had already paid for sandbags, pumps and higher insurance premiums out of their own pockets. His council has collected more than 6,000 signatures calling for a public hearing.
We are not asking for miracles. We are asking for a date, a budget and someone who answers the phone.
Adrian Molnar, chair, Coastal Residents’ Council
Wards, budgets and trust
The conversation then turned to the decision by the Coastal Region health authority to close the night-time maternity ward in Lakeshore, sending expectant mothers on a 50-kilometer drive to Port Alden. Officials argue that staff shortages left them no choice; Molnar called the move “a closure announced as a reorganization.”
Asked whether he expected the budget now before the National Assembly to change anything, he was cautious. The governing Civic Union has promised additional funds for regional hospitals, while the Progress Party says the money is too little and arrives too late.
A spokesperson for the transport ministry, contacted by News. after the broadcast, said a revised timetable for the barrier would be presented to the Assembly’s infrastructure committee next month. The Coastal Region health authority said it would meet the residents’ council before the end of the month.
The full interview, including Molnar’s answers to viewer questions, is available in the video above.
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