Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The fact of the matter is that all of the airports outside of Dublin have great challenges right now. The current model, and this is something we have alluded to in the past, of competing airports is fundamentally flawed. In that respect I welcome the additional funding in yesterday’s budget both for Shannon and Cork airports which is a positive measure and needs to be acknowledged. The problem, as the manager of Cork Airport said yesterday, is that it is just a start. Much more is needed.

We then have the issue of Shannon Airport itself. My relationship with Shannon goes back to 1983 when I went to NIHE, as it was then, in Limerick. I am fairly certain that every year since 1987 I have flown in and out of that airport. I know it very well and like so many others of my middle age, I can see the changes over the years and how it has fallen back quite drastically from the times when we had approximately 3.6 million passengers at its peak. The last few months have definitely been the most challenging for Shannon Airport.Here is the point. The Covid crisis is absolutely awful but there was a crisis in Shannon Airport long before it. I want to talk about the people who have not been heard in the debate to date and these are the employees. Over the past week, I have spoken to employees and their union representatives. The story they tell me is one of having lost confidence in the management of Shannon Group. There is no other way to put it. They have lost confidence and have suffered. We have had 55 job losses to date, on top of 14 other people laid off and 70 people put on shorter time. They have been on short time for six months or more at this point. Then, in September, the few remaining full-time staff had a 20% pay cut imposed on them. Something that is quite challenging, that I did not realise until I investigated this, is that since separation a differential of 15% arose between the pay of Cork Airport workers and Shannon Airport workers. On top of this, there is now a further 20% cut. There is now a differential of between 30% and 35% for a worker doing the same job in Shannon Airport as in Cork Airport. This in itself shows the depth of the crisis people are enduring.

I hear stories of people who had to apply for a break from their mortgage and then apply for an extension to that break and a further extension. They understand they have to make sacrifices because we are in this huge crisis but they do not see Shannon Airport as it is currently constituted being able to pull itself out of the crisis without a fundamental change. This change has to be about the thing some of us have been reluctant to speak about at times. In fairness, others have not been reluctant. It is the mistake that was made in 2013 in separating Shannon Airport from Dublin Airport and Cork Airport. Sinn Féin has always been consistent in this regard. There was a narrative, and the Minister of State referred to it when she was here a couple of weeks ago, that everyone was in favour of it at the time. In fairness, that was not the case. We have been consistently against it. Since 2013, the three unions involved, SIPTU Fórsa and Connect, have been saying it was a huge mistake.

I acknowledge Senator Dooley who expressed his own concerns at the time. Only two weeks ago, he said that even before the pandemic the vast bulk of international aviation was going through Dublin Airport and Shannon Airport was not even keeping pace with the growth in tourism and was on the back foot anyway. He is absolutely right about that. My good colleague and friend, Senator Conway, said he could not see how Shannon Airport could compete against Dublin Airport as an independent entity and that there could have been a sensible realignment of the airport's position within the DAA group. This is exactly what should have happened but it did not happen.

At the end of the day, we have to look at the facts. It is particularly useful to compare Cork Airport with Shannon Airport. A decade ago, Cork Airport had 100,000 passengers per year more than Shannon Airport. As of last year, it had 900,000 more passengers. It is an airport not without its challenges, as I am sure my colleague, Senator Buttimer, will allude to but it had streaked ahead and was the fastest growing airport in the country within an integrated network. At the same time, we had Shannon Airport having to compete with Dublin Airport and Cork Airport and, frankly, not being able to do so. Its performance in the past four years in particular has been very poor.

The best way to demonstrate how ludicrous a decision it was to separate Shannon Airport from Cork Airport and Dublin Airport is to ask the Minister of State, who is from Galway if I am not mistaken, how she would feel about us proposing to separate Galway railway station and set it up as an independent company so it can compete against the rest of the CIÉ group and the Irish Rail group and run its own trains? We would all agree it would be a non-runner. This is the equivalent of what has happened here with Shannon Airport. It was a tragic mistake.

I know it is difficult because that mistake was made by Deputy Leo Varadkar, which makes life a little bit difficult, but he got it wrong. It sets up Shannon Airport as a direct competitor against the monolith that is Dublin Airport and the results have been stark for all to see. When we speak to workers in the airport they will tell us consistently that separation has been a failure. In years of massive growth in aviation traffic, Shannon Airport has not only been dwarfed by Dublin Airport but has been consistently outperformed by Cork Airport which, as I said, remained within the structures of the DAA.

Another example of how ludicrous it is to pit one airport against another can be seen in what happened to the DAA shared services business, which was based in Shannon. It contributed €400,000 a year in rent to Shannon Group. In 2017, after separation, the DAA management in Dublin moved the company out of Shannon to a private landlord in Limerick instead. We had one State company actively trying to undo another because the DAA was set up as a competitor to Shannon Airport. It did not see any point in contributing any income to a competitor in Shannon. It did not want to be subsidising a competitor so it moved its business. I hope everyone here can see how ludicrous a decision that was.

Until this year, as we know, business was booming in Dublin Airport, so much so that it was beginning to run out of room to fit all of the airlines that wanted to fly out of Dublin. I have this from a very good source. It would have made sound sense from a policy point of view for Dublin Airport to distribute some of the business, particularly transatlantic business, to Shannon Airport but it was impossible because Shannon Airport was now a competitor. Here we get to the nub of the issue. The current structures do not work for Shannon Airport or the west of Ireland in general. In a competition between the east and the west we know who will win.

We have to tackle this issue. It is important to recognise the broad nature of people throughout politics in the mid-west who have declared that the separation has been a failure. Yes, Sinn Féin has been leading on this but there are important voices in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil who have alluded to the very same thing. Let me be clear. Sinn Féin is not calling for Shannon Airport to be passed by Dublin Airport. We are calling for a new policy that integrates Shannon Airport, Cork Airport and Dublin Airport into one shared national airport authority that has a clear direction from the Government to achieve regional balance. The only way this regional balance can be achieved is to work in an integrated way. If airports are competing against each other how can it possibly work? It would take in airports such as Ireland West Airport Knock, Donegal Airport and Kerry Airport. This is the only way we can achieve regional balance. The idea that they would compete against each other is crazy. On an island the size of the one we have it makes no sense. We need an authority that would have leverage over airlines with joined up thinking that could insist if airlines want to come into Dublin Airport, which is where they all want to go and let us make no bones about it, they must also come into Shannon Airport and Cork Airport. This is the only model that will be sustainable in the long term for Shannon Airport.

Now is the opportune time to act on this. The Minister, Deputy Ryan, gave us as an excuse for not taking action that it would take too long. This is what he said in the Dáil a couple of weeks ago. I have to recall that the Minister, Deputy Ryan, as part of a previous Government, was able to bail out the banks to the tune of €64 billion in a matter of hours so I really do not buy that line. What is lacking is political will. If it does take time then all the more reason to start now. After all, most airports predict it will take two to three years to get back to previous business levels.

The review is under way. The power of the motion is that all of us can unite to send a clear message to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, that the status quocannot hold and we need to reintegrate Shannon Airport into a new national airport authority that ensures regional balance and the long-term future for Shannon Airport, Limerick, the mid-west and the 46,000 jobs. Shannon Airport is an international brand. It is something of which we have all been very proud for decades but it has never been so low. It will not fix itself. Funding it from time to time with emergency funding is welcome but it will not fix it. The fundamental model is broken. We need fresh thinking and new thinking. I call on all Senators to back the motion and back a secure future for Shannon Airport.