Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is really important. I thank Mr. Henry for that. I believe he has answered it correctly. Far too many people who have appeared before this committee in the past have talked about Shannon Group. Shannon Group has been used as a methodology of hiding the failure of the entire entity to increase passenger traffic. The whole thing is about aviation, but when Shannon Development was subsumed into the broader group, it was then started to be presented to us as a business and it was about profit and loss.

The Shannon Group did very well because it was created at a time there was a demand for property. The property assets were put in under the umbrella of the airport and it took off. They were given to the group for nothing, revalued, borrowed against and new buildings were built, which was all brilliant. There is no issue with property development in the mid-west. Any property developers given the Shannon Development asset would have made a success out of it. Well done to the people in the group who did it, but the difficulty was it masked the considerable decline of aviation traffic at a time passenger numbers through the country were growing exponentially and Shannon did not even get its fair slice of it. That is not to take away from the wonderful management in place. In my view it was a failure of strategic direction by the then board.

I am heartened that everything Mr. Henry has said here focuses on aviation and not the ancillary stuff. That is brilliant; that is really important. However, people do not need to come in here to get a slap on the back for something that is going well. It is about the challenge because aviation matters to the region. It matters to the small businesses in Kilrush, Kilkee, Mountshannon, Scariff and elsewhere. It matters for the small hospitality business that depends on three French tourists turning up today and four Americans tomorrow. It is about the coffee shop in Labasheeda, the glamping facility there and others. They depend on people passing.

Jaguar Land Rover is brilliant and creates great employment. However, Shannon exists to support passengers coming through the airport, people going on holidays and people coming here. If Mr. Henry sticks to that mantra, does not get lost in the profit and loss of the group, and challenges it every time it is presented to him that it is just about profit and loss, then he will have achieved success.

I compliment Mary Considine and her team. They went through a lot during the pandemic. She has done an amazing job. Mr. Henry has an amazing person beside him there. She has managed to handle it without strategic direction from a chairman for some time. Hats off to the people working on the ground. They are ready, willing and able if they get the strategic direction. Mr. Henry's challenge will be to take the board in a direction that goes back to focus on key air connectivity. His inbox will be filled with reports every day about which airport to go to. I will not get into that. He knows the key hubs in Europe that we need.

He needs to keep the focus on passengers through the airport, more airlines and more business for the region. He should not get caught up on the profit and loss account. I accept the company must be successful. However, it has a significant property asset, which it got for nothing. I know there are cross-compliance issues there. He can come back with that as a policy request if that is what it is because that was put into a document at a later stage. It could have been excluded and maybe it can be done now. I wish Mr. Henry the best of luck and continued success.