Brendan Ryan (Labour)

Everyone in Ireland feels an emotional twinge about Aer Lingus in a way that was never true of Eircom. I am not sure why that is the case. Perhaps it is because Aer Lingus is the company we identify most with our achievement of a degree of modernisation or perhaps it is a symbol of our independence.

I was born long after Aer Lingus was founded and I remember the return of its cancelled transatlantic service. The country felt an enormous sense of pride about the return of the service. Looking back, it is difficult to understand how anybody could have considered the provision by our national airline of a direct transatlantic service to be unsustainable given the extent of connections between this country and the USA. On the parts of the west coast that I know best, people identify more closely with the eastern United States than they do with London as that is where their families have moved. There are people I know whose knowledge of the geography of Springfield, Massachusetts, is much better than their knowledge of areas of London. Indeed, 20 years ago, their knowledge of Springfield was greater than their knowledge of Dublin. Aer Lingus pushes buttons with us which is why we must be careful not to allow emotion, or its absence, to determine how we consider it.

The employees of Aer Lingus have earned the right to their 14.9%. They have responded extraordinarily well to very difficult circumstances. It is worthwhile making a random check on the Internet to compare Aer Lingus fares to those of other airlines which claim to provide low fares. It is one of the unfortunate facts of my life that my name forms part of the name of an airline the achievements of which I am not inclined to praise too highly. I cannot do anything about it as I do not own the copyright. If one picks a date a fortnight from now and compares available prices, one will find that the difference is insignificant. In fact, the highest airfare I have seen paid on my behalf for travel to Britain was to Ryanair. I was travelling on Oireachtas business and the cost of the flight was €220 single from Cork Airport to Stansted due to late booking. I hasten to add that I was not paying. Had I known about the cost, I would have objected, but by the time it was booked I had no say in the matter.

While Aer Lingus has achieved a great deal, I am unpersuaded that share options for employees should be any more than a just reward and a stake in the company's future. As a preliminary to privatisation, I am unconvinced of their utility. I do not have a great deal of ideological baggage when it comes to public ownership or privatisation. As Seán Lemass always said, one should look at the merits and demerits of each case. We would never have had a national airline if the State had not established it. We would never have had modern airports if the State had not set them up and there would be no railway network if the State had not sustained it. There is a very long list one can go through while questioning the wisdom of the State with a significant degree of 20-20 hindsight. Without the State there are many things our society would not have. We would not have our high technology industries if the State, in the person of Dr. Patrick Hillery, had not established the regional technical colleges. The colleges represented the most revolutionary change in Irish third level education in 100 years.

The State's decisions to get involved in areas some people nowadays regard as unusual were largely justified by the outcome. Aer Lingus is a classic example. I am very reluctant to concede fundamental changes which transfer ownership of airports or the national airline until I hear a coherent case for doing so. I need to be convinced. I would like to see the business case in each instance and the economic arguments. I am very sceptical about the gung-ho beliefs of individuals and business communities in Cork and Limerick that if the burden called Aer Rianta was lifted from their shoulders, we would see wonderful, thriving airlines. I am entitled, as a citizen of Cork, to be convinced that what these people want will be good for my region. I am profoundly unconvinced at present. The leaked proposal of a mish-mash of interlinked, confusing debts will make Aer Rianta four times more complicated with half the accountability.

I do not care who owns our airports as long as they do what they are supposed to, but I am unconvinced about the current proposals. I take a similar view on Aer Lingus. It is much too easy to blame Aer Lingus for its own woes. It is worth reminding ourselves that in the 1980s, it was instructed by Governments of different political complexions to retain a transatlantic service which was losing vast quantities of money. The airline was subsequently blamed when the losses threatened its balance sheet. It is hard to blame the airline for the crises which followed 11 September 2001 and the foot and mouth disease outbreak. The company was not at fault, but its response was remarkable and considerable.

The high prices which everybody talks about were wrong. However, they were not the fault of Aer Lingus. We should remember that the Dublin-London route was a cosy cartel between Aer Lingus and British Airways, sustained enthusiastically for years by Mrs. Thatcher to fatten up BA before she privatised it. We would not have been permitted to introduce competition by the other sovereign state involved because it would have undermined Mrs. Thatcher's pet project. It is rich to blame Aer Lingus for cashing in on an established scenario which both Governments, particularly the British, supported.

I am not convinced in principle that efficiency, flexibility or future funding are reasons to privatise Aer Lingus. Already, its decoupling from the large local airports at Cork and Shannon is a matter of great concern. It is now impossible to fly on an Aer Lingus flight and have one's baggage transferred directly to Cork. Aer Lingus will not transfer baggage from its flights to Aer Arann or from Aer Arann flights. That adds two hours to a journey to or from Cork. It is a decision Aer Lingus has taken for the sake of efficiency but it is not in the public interest.

As Senator Ross said, and I agree with him, a privatised Aer Lingus will either be tied up in a series of knots which will make it impossible for it to function or, once sold off, will be very vulnerable. Some of its most attractive assets, in particular, the Heathrow slots, might be sold off in precisely the way Eircom sold off its best asset, Eircell. There are reasons of real national interest to prevent that and the best way to do it is to retain Aer Lingus in public ownership.