Former Transport Minister accuses government of having 'lack of sympathy' for Shannon Airport
FORMER Transport Minister Shane Ross believes there is a “lack of sympathy” for Shannon Airport at government level.
And he accused ministers of adopting a “minimalistic approach” to the local airport, suggesting it is on “life-support”.
Shannon secured independence from the Dublin Airport Authority in 2013, but Mr Ross says the independent body running the facility is “not a terribly healthy organisation”.
He was speaking on a visit to Limerick to promote his new biography of Sinn Fein president Mary-Lou McDonald.
Galway man Pádraig O'Céidigh, a former senator and founder of Aer Arann, held the post of chair of the Shannon Airport group, but quit after less than six months in the post earlier this year.
“I think he was an excellent person [for the role]. He’s an entrepreneur. But he was very disillusioned about the way the place was operating,” said Mr Ross.
Although Shannon Airport boss Mary Considine projects annual passenger numbers will rise to about 80% of its pre-pandemic figure of 1.8 million, the numbers are far below those of Dublin.
Given the queues at Dublin Airport during the peak summer travel period, there were calls to utilise Shannon’s spare capacity.
“There’s never been any proper civil service or government commitment to doing anything outside of Dublin,” said Mr Ross, a TD in the capital between 2011 and 2020,
“There’s a lack of sympathy for Shannon. There’s a problem in government and in the civil service where they realise they have to keep supporting it. They can’t let it go under. But it’s a minimalist approach, it’s on life support, there’s no imagination.”
As for those summer queues in Dublin, he said: “I wasn’t surprised when I saw these. Dublin Airport is a state monopoly. State monopolies are not efficient. It’s been an accident waiting to happen for a long long time. They are a law unto themselves. The lack of competition there has always manifested itself in a lack of commercial vigour. Throughout the organisation there is a self-satisfaction. And they were caught napping because they were complacent.”
There were calls – chiefly from Sinn Fein – for Shannon to be subsumed back into the DAA.
But Mr Ross said: “That would be a State monopoly increasing its empire. Shannon would catch the DAA disease. It needs to be a completely separate company.”