Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

I thank Deputy Broughan for sharing time. I am very disappointed that the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Coughlan, chose to leave the Chamber. She was in the Chamber for the vote but she chose to leave rather than stay for this Adjournment debate. I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Kelleher, for attending but it is regrettable that the senior Minister did not choose to stay here to deal with this debate. Unfortunately, that has been a feature of the way in which she has dealt with this issue since it first arose. It seems impossible to pin her down. A number of requests by Deputy Broughan and I and other members of the Labour Party have been made for a meeting to deal with this urgent situation. Unfortunately, she has not seen fit to agree to that.

Like other representatives on the north side of Dublin, I have a deep concern at what is happening at the airport. There were more than 1,100 highly-skilled, good-quality, high net worth jobs in the airport. The outfit was very successful, as Team Aer Lingus first, then as FLS and more recently has SR Technics.

The jobs are important to the to the region, and the downstream jobs that arose because of this quality employment are too numerous to mention. Those jobs are in serious jeopardy. The company was very successful and it had a fine facility at Dublin doing excellent work with a first class safety record.

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