Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister states, in response and on a number of occasions, that the Government is seeking legally-binding guarantees on the slot access to Heathrow from the three State airports. Can he tell us what the nature of such legal guarantees might be? Can he indicate what kind of recourse would exist and, in default of such agreements, what kind of remedies might be put in place? In the minds of most, the kind of legal guarantees that are mentioned are fairly worthless. The views of many would be that a legally-binding guarantee to retain slot access to Heathrow for five, seven or ten years could easily be breached by one contracting party and, in the case of default, the only recourse would be some kind of financial compensation which would be worthless to the people, to the foreign direct investment and to the companies that have already located in the southern region of this country. The Minister would be wrong to think that somehow, seven or eight years of a legally-binding guarantee to retain slot access to Heathrow from Shannon and Cork is appropriate without some kind of concrete guarantee in dealing with a default on the contract and the recompense that would be in place. Anything other than a reversal to a State entity of the slot access would not be considered appropriate.

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