Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this debate and in particular congratulate my colleague, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, for doing a very competent and good job over the last six months in negotiating a deal for Aer Lingus, Ireland, regional connectivity and the staff of the company that is very much worth supporting. It is important in debating this issue to do so on the basis of the facts. Some Deputies opposite have been talking about Aer Lingus as if we owned it in full. We do not. The decision was made in 2006 to privatise Aer Lingus for good or for ill. What we have today is a 25.1 % stake that gives us a very limited influence over the running of the airline. On key issues like the protection of slots into Heathrow, the only thing we can do is to act in combination with other shareholders to prevent the sale of those slots. As we saw a number of years ago when Aer Lingus decided for commercial reasons to move a slot from Shannon to Belfast, the Government could do nothing about it. As such, we need to get away from this narrative that Ireland is somehow selling a State airline. The decision was made back in 2006 to privatise an airline that had to survive on its own commercially.

Many airlines that were 100% state-owned across the European Union went bust while Aer Lingus has done a brilliant job as a relatively small airline. The only airlines of similar size in Europe are Finnair and TAP. Aer Lingus has done a great job to reinvent itself and find ways to reduce its cost base while increasing its services. Aer Lingus is vulnerable in the future because its size, however. The trend in the airline industry is that airlines of the size of Aer Lingus must be part of partnerships where large parent companies with connectivity all over Europe and all over the world can add strength to the story the company carries into the future. We must decide how we use the 25.1% we currently hold in Aer Lingus at a moment of maximum leverage to ensure we get the best possible deal for the company and the country into the future. In my view, that moment is now. To hear people talking about this being a rushed deal is odd. This has been six or seven months' of negotiation. Nothing has been rushed. Just because everybody in the House has not been involved in all of the conversations does not mean it is a rushed deal.

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