Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the hospital pass that the Minister of State has been given with this project. I wrote to his Department asking when in the past ten years a project that was 100% going to be funded by the private sector before the Department put in a cent of funding was last done. Nothing like it has been done in the previous ten years. The proposal is that private money will deliver the full investment for the airport before the Department would be asked to provide a shilling. It will deliver the runway, the apron, the terminal buildings, the upgrades to the roads, all the regulatory items and operating licence, that is everything. It is amusing when the Minister of State talks about the Department’s assessment. The Department has spent €350 million on metro north, which has been waste of money. It is a Department that was cribbing about the search and rescue contract costing €60 million a year and then wrote a contract for €100 million a year and at the same time reduced the operational efficiency of the helicopters involved. This is an equality issue for the south east. It is also a pro rata strategic investment. Do the Department officials not realise we live on an island? If the Minister of State walks down the corridor, he will see a copy of the Proclamation, which asserts equal rights for every citizen in this country. We are not getting that in what the Minister of State is describing.

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