Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Cork Airport is due to close for ten weeks for essential runway repairs between 12 September and 22 November. Having kept workers on the payroll throughout 16 months of the pandemic, Aer Lingus has announced plans to temporarily lay off 200 workers for the duration of the repair work. Other airport employers may take similar actions. The workers are opposed to this plan. They want to be kept on the company books and I support them in this aim. This issue is already prominent in Cork. If left unresolved for much longer, it will become an issue of quite major significance and profile locally, including in the constituency of the Taoiseach, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform.

Aer Lingus and other employers at the airport are in receipt of considerable State supports related to the pandemic. For example, Aer Lingus is in talks with the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, having secured €150 million in debt funding to date. According to last Sunday's Business Post, the airports at Cork, Dublin and Shannon are to receive a combined €20 million in funding before 19 July.

There is also the question of the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS. Last week, the CEO of Aer Lingus, Lynne Embleton, told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications that, at the time the lay-offs were announced, there had been no work in Cork Airport for a period and that this is what lay-offs and closures are there to accommodate. She also said that, at the time of the decision to announce the lay-offs, there was uncertainty around the EWSS, its continuation and what form any continuation would take. There is no uncertainty around the EWSS now. There is no uncertainty about its continuance or what form that continuance will take. The EWSS will continue until 31 December and will be in place for the entirety of the period for which Cork Airport is to be shut.

Does the Tánaiste believe it is appropriate for an employer which has been in receipt of the EWSS since its inception, in addition to other State supports, to take workers off the company books while continuing to be part of the scheme and continuing to negotiate for other supports? As a representative of the State that is providing these supports, is the Tánaiste prepared to voice support for these workers and to indicate support for their very modest and reasonable ask that they be kept on the company books while these repairs take place?

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