Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Section 30 provides for the dissolution of Cork Airport Authority plc on a day to be appointed by order of the Minister. It also provides for the Minister to re-establish the Cork Airport Authority again in the future. In the interim, provision is made to protect the name – Cork Airport Authority – from being registered by anyone else. Certain consequential amendments to the State Airports Act 2004 are also contained in the section.
Two years ago, in connection with its earlier decisions on State airport restructuring, the Government decided that ownership of Cork Airport by the DAA would be maintained for the present but that the matter would be kept under review. The position has not changed and any proposal to separate Cork Airport from the DAA is not likely to arise in the short term. The airport would have to be much closer to breaking even in terms of its costs and revenues and there is also the very large debt attached to the terminal, which I do not see being resolved in the near term. If and when the airport is separated, we will need to have a Cork Airport Authority in situto receive the business from the DAA and we will re-establish it again at that stage.
For the past ten years we have had what I consider to be a rather ludicrous situation, which is a company that is a fully fledged plc under the Companies Act, established for the purpose of owning, managing and operating the airport in Cork, but the company has no airport, staff nor business. It was a little surreal to have CAA plc in place under those circumstances and it is not a good idea to continue that. What section 30 does is bring a degree of common sense to the situation and we intend to wind up the company until it is needed. The Bill makes provision to re-establish the company at a future date if it is needed.
In the meantime, rather than having a surreal, phantom company, I have tried to do something a bit more practical that might help the airport grow and develop. That is why I established the Cork Airport Development Council as a stakeholder body which is multi-sectoral and is designed to boost the development of the airport. The council had its first meeting in March and I hope to meet it in June. The council is chaired by the DAA chairman, Pádraig Ó Ríordáin, who is from Cork, and contains representatives from the business sectors, including nine external members. For example, there are representatives of Fáilte Ireland, Conor Healy from Cork Chamber of Commerce, the airport managing director, John Mullins from the Port of Cork, Michael Murphy from UCC, Eric Nolan from the DAA, Anne-Marie O’Brien from Ballydoyle racing stables, Emma O’Brien from Clonakilty Chamber of Commerce, Joe O’Flynn from SIPTU, Ann-Marie O’Sullivan from the board of the DAA, Bob Savage from EMC, Kevin Toland, chief executive of the DAA, Jim Woulfe from Dairygold and Gerry Walsh from the DAA.

This is a much more practical way of doing what the Senator wants us to do, namely, grow and develop Cork as an airport and destination rather than having a phantom company run it. The proposal is to wind that down but allow us re-establish it in the future should it be possible to separate Cork.