Shane Ross (Independent)

I welcome this debate and appreciate the fact that the Minister comes into this House quite frequently and is willing to speak and listen to us, if not to take our suggestions on board. At least he attends the House and gives us the opportunity to make those suggestions. This debate, which may have been useful a little earlier, is unreal partly because the events being discussed have been decided in principle but also because the reasons the decisions have been made have little to do with those stated by the Government parties.

There were two driving forces in this great aviation debate, none of which have been mentioned in any of the speeches from the Government side. It is all very well to speak about great strategic interests, visionary decisions, long-term key directions and even to straddle the ideological divide between the Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fáil. Good financial and economic arguments have been made on both sides but the two motivating forces in this debate were purely political. Senator Burke touched on it. What decided the so-called "aviation action plan", a piece of PR spinning euphemism which will get into the lexicon of the Irish media if the Government has its way? This great plan was decided by a few handful of seats in north Dublin. That was the motivating force. It is regrettable that such an important decision on infrastructure should be decided by someone who is obsessed with the political consequences in his own backyard. I refer to the Taoiseach. That is acknowledged by those outside the political arena as being the truth of the matter and all other arguments are floss, dressed up as some justification for the decision. The Taoiseach would not have minded whether the second terminal went private, public, DAA, or to the entrepreneurs provided it guaranteed seats.

The other agenda driving this debate, to which the Minister referred unwittingly or otherwise, was the trade unions. The Minister referred, as far as I can recollect, to the trade unions three times regarding the necessity to consult with them on all occasions. The same tributes were not paid nor care taken to consult with business and, most important, little care was taken to consult with those who really matter, namely, the consumers.