Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I take your point, a Chathaoirligh.

I want to raise the issue of Shannon Airport, which has confirmed it is introducing a range of cost-cutting measures which will include reducing the status of the airport and restricting the number of larger airlines transiting through the airport. Management at the airport met with the three unions representing staff a few weeks back to inform them of the plans, which will include the re-categorisation of the airport from category 9 down to category 7, which will limit the number of larger airlines transiting through Shannon.

This news came as a complete shock - a bombshell, in fact - to the staff working in Shannon. I can tell the Minister of State first-hand that many staff are now worried about how the airport has been struggling financially since it separated from the Dublin Airport Authority. One of the staff said to me that staff feel Shannon cannot survive on its own. They feel this reduction in status reduces it to the same level as Knock or Kerry airports. They know it is losing money and they feel a category 7 airport is for smaller aircraft, effectively making Shannon a Ryanair airport for European destinations. Union officials are currently talking to staff at the airport to decide how to respond.

I want to put this in context. The original business plan for the airport painted a rosy picture of achieving 2.5 million passengers by 2021 and adding 3,000 new aviation jobs in the first five years as a stand-alone operation. Behind the spin and bluster, Shannon has completely failed to achieve anything like these figures. In reality, passenger numbers increased from 1.4 million to 1.7 million by 2015, but 2016 saw just a 2% increase in to 1.74 million, a figure way below growth in comparable airports. This compares to 3.6 million travellers who were going through Shannon in 2007. It is depressing to think that those passengers also include the hundreds of thousands of US troops who should not be there, but that is a whole other issue for another day.

Shannon management are now working on a new masterplan, as they describe it, or perhaps that should be a cunning plan, in the Blackadder Baldrick sense of the term. The reality is that instead of increasing jobs, the airport now wants to cut jobs via a downgrading of the status from category 9 to category 7. A key consequence is that Shannon would no longer be nominated as a diversion destination for aircraft travelling across the Atlantic. This is a very retrograde and short-sighted proposal. The name of Shannon Airport is synonymous throughout much of the Western world as a safe haven for flights that encounter difficulty. It is part of the unique brand that Shannon has had to offer for decades. Now, the management want to ditch this brand, with all the goodwill and name awareness it generates, in order to cut services and jobs.

It is increasingly apparent that management have no credible vision for the future of the airport and that the decision to hive off Shannon from the DAA has been a significant mistake. The Minister needs to take responsibility. I would remind him of the words of his predecessor, Deputy Leo Varadkar, with regard to Shannon, when he said:

I think it is defeatist to think that we can’t achieve modest growth by 2021. Quite frankly, if Shannon can’t achieve that kind of growth by 2021, there is no future for the airport...

Clearly, right now, we are miles behind the targets we need to hit.

In conclusion, Shannon Airport has a proud history of transatlantic travel and international status. The people of Clare and Limerick are seeing that tradition and history being rolled up into a ball and thrown in the bin by current management, who made empty promises and have clearly failed to hit targets they themselves promised to deliver. Rather than job growth, we have job cuts, and we now have the prospect of relegating the airport's status, a shameful prospect that no Government should stand for. I ask the Minister to recognise the need for an urgent review of policy with regard to our regional airports, Shannon international airport in particular.