Dinny McGinley (Donegal South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

My priorities are to maintain the existing level of access services currently available to the island, and I conveyed that to the Irish Islands Federation when I met its representatives shortly after being appointed to office. I am glad to say that so far, we have succeeded in doing that for passenger service access, cargo access, air service access or transport to the mainland to people who want to visit Galway and other areas.

As the Deputy has pointed out, the air strips at Cleggan and Inishbofin were developed at a cost of €8.6 million at a time when we thought we had unlimited economic resources in this country, although later we found out that we did not. My entire budget for maintaining the services for the islands is €6 million. I think we did very well, in spite of the cutbacks brought in across the board in every other Department, to maintain that €6 million last year, this year and next year to keep providing the services that are already there. Unfortunately, at this stage, due to the economic downturn and the cutbacks, we cannot afford to develop and maintain further air services. That is the economic reality of the position in which we find ourselves.

See this speech in context