Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

I have not had any discussions with the Minister for Finance with regard to selling off any of the assets of the Dublin Airport Authority, nor do I have any plans in that regard. As an island nation, with a peripheral location, our access infrastructure is of vital strategic importance to our economy. Our airports have a critical role in supporting economic development by facilitating trade, tourism and inward investment. Their operation as State agencies, albeit operating to a commercial mandate, ensures that investment decisions take account of the wider national interest in a way that could not readily be guaranteed were they under private ownership. Any future consideration of the possible privatisation or part-privatisation of these assets would have to include the question of whether it would be possible to design a regulatory framework that could be effective in protecting the wider national interest.

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