Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will talk briefly about the Shannon region, Shannon Airport and Shannon Heritage. On Monday, instead of coming up to Dublin, I joined hundreds of workers protesting at the airport. In this time when all of us, not just the Green Party, are really conscious of the need for a just transition, it is really important that we look at balanced regional development. Instead of looking at increasing the number of flights, we need to look at redirecting flights coming into Dublin to places like Shannon.Shannon Airport is like a ghost town at the moment. In the west, we are very dependent on transatlantic flights from America. The fact is that if one lands a flight from America in Shannon as opposed to Dublin, carbon emissions are immediately reduced by 3%. That is something positive with regard to tourism, sustainable transport and the just transition.

I call on the House to promote the idea that we look at proper, balanced regional supports. We are looking at staycations and laethanta saoire and everybody is talking about their importance, yet the Shannon Group has decided to close the heritage sites at the end of August and some of them have not opened at all. I am very pleased to announce that the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has committed to visiting the airport with me in the coming weeks and that the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, has agreed to visit the heritage sites with me. That is a good starting point considering it took us three years to get the previous Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport down to the airport.