Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I echo the concerns of Ministers, Deputies Donohoe and Howlin and Senator Darragh O'Brien regarding the proposed takeover by British Airways of Aer Lingus. In remote parts of the UK such as Scotland, which has a population of 5.3 million - a half million more people than in this State - there is six times more capacity on the North Atlantic out of Dublin than there is out of Glasgow and Edinburgh combined. British Airways is a Heathrow-based organisation. It wants to divert traffic there and has done so from Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast. We were trying to develop direct links with North America and did so very successfully. The takeover is not by a dynamic airline, rather it is by a traditional European national airline that specialises in colluding with other national airlines. In its own jurisdiction, it is completely over-shadowed by Easyjet and Ryanair.

I note that no worker directors are attending the meetings and neither are two important directors, Christoph Mueller and David Begg, whose terms I understand are expiring. We seriously need to consider the implications of doing in Dublin Airport with British Airways control of Aer Lingus what British Airways has already done in virtually all the UK non-Heathrow Airports. This is a Heathrow-based airline which will funnel everything through Heathrow.

I welcome Ann Pettifor's interview on "Morning Ireland" this morning in which she pointed out that in 1953 half of Germany's debts were written off by the rest of us. She makes an important contribution to the policy debate, as Senator Zappone has done. There were faults in Frankfurt and Brussels. It is not always down to the Greeks being indolent, the Spanish taking long lunch breaks or Irish bankers gone a bit crazy. The design faults in the euro currency have to be addressed. We need a debt summit. I hope that the Government will move towards asking some of the people they meet in Brussels and Frankfurt where they were on 29 September when Irish banks needed rescuing. The lenders of last resort did not turn up. There are faults on both sides. The election of Syriza presents the rest of us with an opportunity to redress that balance. There has been so much misery and impositions on people all around the peripheral countries because the Franco-Germany common currency was translated into a Europe-wide currency, with massive design faults.