Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

I want to allow Cork Airport — as with Shannon and Dublin — to be strong, commercially viable and successful. I am not sure what speech of my predecessor's the Opposition Members have quoted from but I wish to quote from his exact speech of 24 June 2004. Senators will see that the position has not changed one bit. The former Minister for Transport, Deputy Brennan, stated:

The State Airports Bill has been carefully designed to deploy the necessary mechanisms under company law to provide maximum flexibility to effect the restructuring in conformity with the capital maintenance provisions of the Companies Acts. It provides a framework to allow for an orderly approach to the distribution of assets and facilitates the phasing which will be necessary in respect of the distribution of Cork and Shannon because of the insufficiency in Aer Rianta's reserves. The Bill proposes an enabling framework for the restructuring which is in line with existing provisions of company law. Aer Rianta will effectively transfer the assets relating to the airport businesses at Cork and Shannon to the new airport authorities established under the Bill in return for the issue of shares by the new companies to the Minister for Finance. For company law and accounting purposes the transfers will be regarded as distributions made by Aer Rianta to its shareholder, the Minister for Finance. Consequently, Aer Rianta will be able to make the transfers only when it has available distributable reserves equal to the net value of the assets transferred. As the distributable reserves available to Aer Rianta are insufficient for this purpose, a phased approach is provided for in the Bill which will allow for one of the new airport authorities to be vested relatively soon after enactment, namely Shannon Airport, while the second will be vested once sufficient further distributable reserves have been built up within Aer Rianta, namely Cork Airport. A portion of the Cork Airport assets will remain in Aer Rianta and will be subject to a finance lease between Aer Rianta and the Cork Airport Authority.

That statement was made on 24 June 2004. It is utterly untrue to suggest that there is suddenly a problem with company law, that I have decided to do something utterly different from my predecessor, or that Government policy in this area has changed. All this was set out in great clarity and detail and no ambiguous language was used in the 2004 statement. My position today is precisely what the Government decided at that time.

Neither I nor the Government has any interest in somehow establishing Cork, Shannon or Dublin Airports in a financially unviable position. It would be nonsense to do so. As a Minister representing a county next to Cork, I am happy to say I have used Cork Airport recently, in addition to using Shannon. I find both of them to be excellent airports. I have never referred to either Cork or Shannon as regional airports because they are major international airports——