Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Henry is very welcome to the committee. I thank him for his opening statement. I had the pleasure of meeting him in Shannon a couple of weeks ago. His passion and his ambition for Shannon are very clear and he has set them out in his opening statement.

It is clearly evident that Shannon has not reached its potential. One of the key reasons for that is national aviation policy. Mr. Henry will be aware from his movements around the mid-west and the western seaboard, working with different organisations, that this is a glaring omission. As he said in his opening statement, the importance of an airport as an economic driver in a region cannot be overstated. As he says, Shannon Airport is the heartbeat of the mid-west. One aspect of that is the inclusion of Shannon in the Regional Airports Forum, which I advocate strongly. It was right that Shannon was included this year, but I want to see a stronger statement from the Government and the Minister. I look forward to working with Mr. Henry, this committee and the Shannon Airport Oireachtas group to put a robust case to the Government for our inclusion in that stream going forward. This is fully coherent with EU state aid rules because any airport with fewer than 3 million passengers should be incorporated into that fund, yet this year was the first in which Shannon Airport received funding. We can see the impact of that funding in the X-ray scanners and the security apparatus. It is cutting-edge stuff. Shannon Airport was the first airport in Ireland and, dare I say, one of the first airports in Europe where passengers can just go through the airport. Passengers in Dublin Airport, for example, have to go through two security checks to go to the US. In Shannon, they have to go through just one. It is fantastic. It has got a lot of coverage recently. I congratulate those involved on that. I look forward to working with Mr. Henry closely on that.

Limerick Chamber completed the Copenhagen Economics report in conjunction with Ennis, Galway and Shannon chambers. That is a very significant piece of work. It was completed in late 2019, in a pre-pandemic era, but highlights that Shannon Airport was not reaching its potential then, with 1.7 million passengers and only 36% of the capacity of the airport being used. We can do far better but we need the support of the national aviation policy to kick in behind us. I think that is recognised in other countries such as the Netherlands, Finland and Austria, which are referred to in the report. We need to build on that and to place it as part of our robust engagement with the Government on the issue.

I compliment the Shannon Group on its property portfolio. It has been a roaring success since the establishment of Shannon Group. Ten years ago vast tracts of the Shannon Free Zone were derelict and unoccupied. I think the zone was only 40% occupied. There is now an occupancy rate of over 90% and nearly 100%. There are very strong companies based there such as Jaguar Land Rover and MeiraGTx, and there is the expansion of Ei Electronics. That is really significant. Only the other day Ryanair took over hangar 5. I encourage Shannon Group to continue to do the work it is doing in that regard. I look forward to a major logistics company coming to the region, on the apron of the airport. I will not mention its name. It is doing really well there.

The Shannon Heritage sites are a blot on the Shannon Group.