Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As a Government, we have responded to many of the Deputy's campaigns and calls on Shannon Airport. The Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Deputy Lawless, announced just last week €4.2 million for Shannon and Cork airports, and €47 million is being invested in Shannon Airport alone. We are very much committed to it and it is a very important part of the enterprise network along the entire west coast. Cargo volume should be increasing but we cannot account for a private company. Aer Lingus has made a call on this, but I hope the skills of the workers and their commitment to excellence will be made available to other employers in the region. We can certainly bring to the attention of the regional task force that their skill set is available. We have a very successful enterprise task force in the mid-west region and it is working very hard to identify further opportunities to grow investment there, particularly using Shannon Airport as a key growth centre.

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