Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to the Government amendment. When it came through yesterday, Sinn Féin sent it on to some of the airport workers so that they could have a look at it. The response came back within minutes and told us all we needed to know. One of the workers captured the mood, saying "This isn’t an amendment, it’s a totally different motion full of words that resemble the guff that was used when rolling out separation.” It is a rambling series of statements that ultimately says nothing about the most important issue facing the long-term future of the airport, that is, the failure of separation.

The Minister of State need not take my word for it, apart from Deputies Wynne and Quinlivan, Deputy Cathal Crowe from County Clare has been quoted as saying "I don’t think separation has served Shannon well" before going on to suggest:

we bring it back together with Dublin and Cork operating as a national airport authority. A lot of European countries operate like that.

This amendment tells us all that we need to know. It tells us that the Government is in denial about the failure of separation. It is tragic that, right now, when the Government is reviewing Shannon Airport's operations and when a united voice is needed with regard to the failure of separation, Government Senators, including those from Clare, are opting to vote for this amendment, an empty formula of words which gives no direction to the Minister on this crucial issue.

Let us look at the facts of Shannon Airport's performance. The airport was separated from the authority at the very lowest point of the last worldwide recession. Passenger numbers had fallen from over 3 million to 1.4 million. The airport had to increase passenger numbers but the rate of increase, after a few decent years, effectively ground to a halt in 2015, just two years after separation. Since then, it has been a story of underperformance and failure. The gap between Cork Airport, which is within the DAA group, and Shannon Airport is perhaps the most telling statistic. In 2008, Cork Airport had just 100,000 passengers more than Shannon Airport. By 2019, that gap had grown to nearly 900,000 passengers. That is a measure of the failure of the Shannon Group under the current structures.

The Minister of State should be in no doubt that, if he speaks to workers at the airport, they will tell him that separation has been a disaster. They have no confidence in the current management to act within a stand-alone framework or to deliver a recovery from the Covid crisis. God knows what they must be thinking as they watch this debate and see their local representatives duck for cover on the issue of the failure of separation. I note only one Government Senator remains in the Chamber, namely, Senator Dooley. All of the others have gone home.

The amendment also makes reference to Project Ireland 2040. I am a bit confused by this. It is my understanding that Project Ireland 2040 has yet to be reviewed. It is in the programme for Government that it is to be reviewed. The Green Party did not support Project Ireland 2040 when it was announced in 2017. Deputy Eamon Ryan said that we needed a new national development plan. According to this motion, which the Green Party is happy to support, "the Government is committed to balanced regional development; Project Ireland 2040 is a clear manifestation of this commitment and the Government recognises the valuable role that all our State and non-State regional airports play in this regard". It is a bit rich for all of this support to suddenly surround Project Ireland 2040 despite the fact that it has not yet been reviewed.

Limerick Chamber has also said that Project Ireland 2040 was a missed opportunity that will be regretted for generations to come. It also said that the plan ignores the mid-west and Shannon Airport's capacity to rebalance the national economy and that "There are a number of key projects detailed for this region in the National Development Plan but, by and large, these were already announced."

The Government's Project Ireland 2040 is a policy aspiration; the motion we are presenting is policy action. At the time of its launch, Fianna Fáil described Project Ireland 2040 as having been filled with hype and buzzwords.

I speak as someone from Dublin who believes that the city is overwhelmed, that appropriate levels of development and activity are needed across the island, and that we need to challenge the way the city is run. Dublin Airport's hub connectivity has increased by 286% over the past ten years, making Dublin Airport one of four new entrants to the best hub connectivity rankings alongside Düsseldorf, Warsaw and Berlin airports. A transfer hub costing €16 million opened in 2018, with Dublin Airport's connecting passenger numbers growing from 550,000 in 2013 to almost 1.6 million in 2018.

As has been mentioned by Sinn Féin speakers here tonight, being an island nation with a broad disparity in economic prosperity, planning our infrastructure towards one city on the island whose traffic system cannot cope and which suffers from chronic housing shortages and astronomical rents is creating long-term problems. I live in the city and I know that it is run for an economy rather than for a society. A policy centred on the east is feeding the problem in Dublin and starving the solution in the west. Stories of buses transporting people from Shannon to Dublin Airport for transatlantic flights do not make sense on so many levels. It makes no sense from the perspectives of local employment, the environment or balanced economic development.

A report by Danish consultancy Copenhagen Economics commissioned by Limerick Chamber last year looked at the dominance of Dublin Airport over others. It accounted for 86% of all traffic in 2018, up from 76% a decade before. It was suggested in the report that regional airports should be developed to handle excess capacity from the capital in order to entice further foreign direct investment in the west and mid-west.

Shannon Airport is in difficulty because of Covid but it was in decline long before that because of Government inaction. The airport's reintegration into a national authority is about the mid-west, the west of Ireland and the intention to establish a balanced economy. The amendment states that this Government wants to examine Shannon Group and to look at the supports that may be necessary. The amendment seeks to "ensure that Shannon Group is well positioned for the future". How exactly is this to be done? Further financial supports are to be considered but this will not give the people of the mid-west any confidence. It is empty rhetoric designed to dodge the major issue. The issue remains the failure of the separation project. Tonight was an opportunity to send a clear message to the Minister to change direction in respect of Shannon Airport and to reintegrate it into one national airport authority.It is disappointing Government Senators have, instead, decided to play party politics and turn their backs on the airport's employees, as well as the many businesses which depend on its key routes to Heathrow and the east coast of the US.