Mr. Joe Gilmore:

I thank the committee for the invitation to provide a witness statement to it. I will provide a very short summary, as the other airports have done. I will also give a brief background on Ireland West Airport. I know many members are familiar with the airport and I will give it some context in the aviation landscape of the island. I will in addition give an update on the current situation and I will also outline how we see the situation going forward.

Ireland West Airport opened in May 1986 and was managed originally by the Connaught Airport Development Company, which was effectively a private company with 36 shareholders led by Monsignor Horan at the time. The State invested approximately £10 million in the airport and the monsignor and his team raised approximately £5 million to complete the airport. In 1991 the Government withdrew its nominees to the board of the original airport and a public trust was established by deed of trust in the same year. It was constituted as the Horan Airport Trust, so we are a community trust. The trust was signed at the time by then Minister for Transport, the late Séamus Brennan, a Galway man, with the objectives of developing the airport on a commercial basis for the people of the west and north west, expanding air services to international markets and supporting employment, tourism and business growth in the region.

Any dividends or profits that the airport makes must be reinvested in the airport and the trustees and board of directors of the airport provide their services on a fully voluntary basis. Therefore, there are no private shareholders and the rights attached to the trust shares are to invest in, encourage and facilitate investment in the future of the airport to fulfil the objectives of the airport. I wanted to set that out because at times some degree of clarification is needed in terms of the ownership structure of the airport.

I am pleased to advise that in 2017, as a further vote of confidence in the airport, seven local authorities across the region invested in the airport and took a 17.5% shareholding with the objective of further driving economic development and with a key focus on inbound tourism, business and economic development, leading to strong growth in inbound visitors and the designation of the airport last year as a strategic development zone, the only airport in Ireland with that zoning. We are unique in many ways compared to other airports, in particular due to our ownership structure and the equity shareholding taken by the seven local authorities.

It has given us a unique regional investment in partnership in the facility between the people of the region and the Government. It has also been a very positive endorsement by local government in the airport and it has helped us to drive forward in the past three to four years in positive collaboration and co-operation, in particular in trying to harness the very large diaspora from the west and the north west, which the airport caters for internationally.

As I outlined, the airport was designated last year as a strategic development zone and was also recognised as one of the four main airports in the country with a commitment from Government, in the Project Ireland 2040 plan and the national development plan, for increased investment and prioritising the airport as a critical driver of economic and tourism development for the west and the north west.

The airport serves one quarter of the country's landmass from a regional development perspective with jet runway capabilities and with a population catchment of 1.2 million across the west, the north west and the midlands. We have the third largest runway in the country, of which we are very proud. It was put in place 35 years ago by visionaries who drove the development of the airport and we have the capability to handle all types of aircraft. In 2013, we were pleased to welcome wide-bodied 767s for the G8 Summit, Air Force Two, with Vice President Joe Biden in 2016 and, most recently, we welcomed Pope Francis in 2018 as part of his visit to Ireland.

We have experienced significant passenger growth since 2010 and last year was our record year with more than 800,000 passengers. As a non-State owned airport, we operate under a fully commercial remit. While we do receive funding, as the other regional airports do, under the regional airports programme, until this year we have managed to self-finance more than 90% of our operating costs from commercial and aeronautical revenues that we receive from passengers using the airport.

We are a key gateway, as the other airports are, in delivering 12 million visitors to the region so far since we opened. With an estimated annual tourism spend of more than €200 million we are contributing €112 million of gross value added, GVA, to the local economy and we support 3,000 jobs locally.

Coming to 2020, like the other airports we were looking forward to a very successful year. We were driving hard to achieve 1 million passengers and looking at a very strong performance in route network. However, on 5 March, unfortunately, one of our main airline partners, Flybe, which services Birmingham, Edinburgh and Manchester, went into insolvency as a result of Covid-19. That was the first blow and it was a loss of more than 100,000 passengers. When Covid-19 hit at the end of March, the airport was forced to close its doors for the first time in 35 years and lay off all its staff for a three-month period. That was as a direct result of our remaining airline partners, Aer Lingus and Ryanair, withdrawing their services. We resumed flights, as the other airports did, from 1 July with Ryanair and Lauda operating at 50% of their frequency. However, as we all know at this stage, it was a false dawn for air travel. Passenger load factors were extremely low at below 30% and passenger numbers have collapsed by more than 90% since then as a result of the pandemic and the severe stringent travel restrictions that had to be imposed.

In late October, Ryanair confirmed an 80% reduction in our winter schedule and, as of last week, a complete suspension of flights into the airport for the coming four-week period, as has happened in the other airports. As a result, we restructured the business over the summer period and, unfortunately, we have had to reduce our workforce by up to 70%. To date, we have had 43 redundancies and 100 staff placed on temporary lay-offs. The remaining staff are keeping the airport operational on a three-day week. It has been an extremely difficult period for the airport, as for all the other airports, in trying to manage what has been six different periods of restructuring.

We appreciate and acknowledge the support received from the Government through the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, the temporary Covid-19 wage subsidy scheme, TWSS and the rates relief received from the local authorities. Despite that, however, we are sustaining very significant losses as we have no commercial revenues or passenger flow through the airport. We are looking at losses of close to €4 million and a reduction in our turnover by €11 million, which is catastrophic from a business perspective. It goes without saying that the region is deeply concerned in the medium term that vital air services would be lost to regional Ireland, which could be lost for a very long time given the current market conditions and travel restrictions in place. Industry experts are forecasting that it could be 2024 before there is a recovery to air travel.

In terms of what we are looking at and what we have been in discussion with the Government on, the media reports on which would provide more details, yesterday's announcement, to a degree, supersedes a number of our requests. I was a member of the aviation recovery task force, the Government-appointed task force, in June and July, which produced the report outlining key recommendations. That task force report was very clear on the specific requests. From our perspective, we were calling on the Government to provide additional support to help us bridge the gap in the significant losses. In a normal year the current regional airports programme is very sufficient in supporting us as an airport to achieve a break-even situation. However, as a result of the dramatic collapse in traffic, we were seeking additional funding support for this year, which was an exceptional year, to a level that would cover the airport's net loss position of close to €4 million, given that unlike in previous years, the capability of non-core airport activities, that is, commercial, car parking, retail, catering and car hire, would typically provide income to the airport that we could cover the shortfall. We were seeking the implementation of the aviation recovery task force report and incentivisation to restore critical air travel into the region. I recognise that the measures taken yesterday in the support package for the aviation sector that were announced will start to address that for the initial three-month period from January to March next year, with the charges rebate scheme being proposed for airlines.

On the adaption of the European Commission's traffic light system, we are pleased to see that moving forward. We are seeking that the Government would continue to work with the airports and ourselves in mapping out a common system of pre-departure testing at all Irish airports in advance of the Christmas travel period. Like all the regional airports, in the month of December we usually have more than 50,000 people who would use the airport. Most of those usually travel from nine destinations we serve in the UK market. Many of those are looking to book and are wondering if they can return home for Christmas. We are pleased with the clarifications that are starting to flow from the Government in terms of travel from green, orange and red listed countries.

In terms of testing, like the other airports we are evaluating private operators to provide on-site testing here. We will expect to have that in place when we restart operations in mid-December.

On the travel side, from a west of Ireland perspective, we are much more dependent on the UK market. I refer to a mechanism whereby the Government could prioritise the opening up of an air corridor with the UK, with limited or zero travel restrictions for the regions with similar disease levels, as regional airports rely to a much larger degree than, say, Dublin on this market. This would also be critical in supporting the survival of thousands of jobs in the small and medium businesses and the tourism and hospitality sectors through this pandemic and the imminent challenges we face as we go forward with Brexit. Would it be feasible for the Government to look at that as a separate sub-committee to see how we could open a corridor from regions of the UK to regional Ireland? I ask because there have been times in the past two to three months - do not take this the wrong way - when the view was that it would have been safer to travel to, say, the London market than across the country to Dublin, purely from a pandemic perspective, but that people travelling from regional London were - and are - being requested to quarantine for two weeks. That is just to highlight the point that our dependency on the UK market is well over three quarters of our business and if that market could be opened up and expedited, it would be of great benefit.

I thank the members for their time and I look forward to taking their questions.