Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. The US preclearance facilities at Dublin and Shannon Airports provide an important service for thousands of people travelling from Ireland every year. Ireland was one of the first countries to offer this service and it has proven to be a significant advantage to the State in terms of attracting airlines and new routes to our two biggest airports. The knock-on economic effects of having tens of thousands of passengers on these routes are obvious.

The US is seeking to expand precleared passenger numbers by 30%. It is important that Ireland's services are operating as efficiently as possible ahead of this planned expansion. If the US is expanding the service, this may have a detrimental effect on the number of airlines who choose Dublin and Shannon Airports in the future. We need to be mindful of this going forward. Passengers have been reporting queues and delays at the service. Hopefully, these issues can be addressed by increased resources at the airports. Approximately 1.9 million passengers availed of this service in 2018, which shows the popularity of the service and how important it is to passengers travelling from Shannon and Dublin Airports to the United States. Shannon Airport in particular is reliant on preclearance. People in the region believe that preclearance has played a key role in the success of the airport, in particular during the crash years.

I take this opportunity to call on the airport authorities to ensure that any costs additional to those that the US authorities have agreed to cover will not be passed on to passengers. I understand how important and useful this service is for passengers: that is not in dispute. However, under the Trump Presidency we face a series of new challenges around preclearance. The American President has imposed a travel ban on people from certain, predominantly, Muslim countries, preventing people from those countries from entering the US. We in Sinn Féin find this policy abhorrent. It is fair to say that most Irish people disagree with policies of this type. It is a scapegoating of people travelling from certain countries and we are supportive of recent efforts in the US to overturn this ban. This policy is now being implemented on Irish soil. I understand that Democratic Congress Members have tabled legislation to overturn this ban and I will be supportive of this.

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