Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming in this afternoon. She will not be surprised that I want to discuss Shannon Airport. We have had a number of conversations on the topic and I know she is well aware of the impact this crisis is having across all of the sectors. I want to acknowledge, in fairness, that supports have been put in place to date although, clearly, we will need to go further.

The situation in Shannon Airport is more intense because of a deeply flawed structure that has operated for the past eight years whereby Shannon was deemed to be an independent airport. The good news, since the last conversation, is that we now have all-party agreement on that fact because the report produced by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications Networks reads, "Recognising the very significant shock to the aviation sector, the Committee recommends the re-establishment of a State Airports Authority, encompassing Dublin, Shannon and Cork airports, to lead the recovery in a balanced way". That report has been signed up to by every political party in this Chamber, which I welcome. I ask the Minister of State to act on that.

The idea that an airport can recover on its own after such a pandemic does not make sense. The idea that we still pit Shannon Airport in competition against Cork Airport or Dublin Airport is absolutely ludicrous and we know it will end in failure. We know that it has been failing long before the Covid crisis. We only have to speak to the staff in Shannon who are now paid broadly about 30% less than their counterparts in Cork because of the ongoing financial crisis in Shannon. Clearly, to expect Shannon Airport to continue to compete against other regional airports is the equivalent of free market fundamentalism that I do not believe anyone across this Chamber could subscribe to. I hope that the Minister of State will reassure me that she will act on this recommendation.We know the whole industry is in crisis. However, we also know now is the time to take these fundamental actions to change the framework to make sure that we achieve the regional balance everyone wants. It will not be achieved by pitting Shannon as an independent airport against Dublin or Cork. We know who wins in that case. We also know that, when the airlines want to come back into Ireland, they will have no interest in talking to Shannon or Cork. They will only be interested in coming back into Dublin Airport. If a new national State authority specifies that an airline that wants to come into Dublin Airport will need to allocate X amount of flights to Shannon Airport and X amount of flights to Cork Airport, that will be how we achieve regional balance. It is in fact the only way to achieve regional balance.

Although I hope she will reassure me otherwise on this point, my fear is that the Minister of State will duck the issue. Running Shannon as an independent airport has not worked and it certainly will not work now. More importantly, every political party, through the transport committee, has signed up to that point and have asked the Minister of State to re-establish a State airport authority and reintegrate Shannon into it. I would welcome the Minister of State's response to that. Hopefully, we can work collectively to achieve the best outcome.

It is frustrating that I am the only representative who ever brings up the issue of US military troops in Shannon Airport, particularly in terms of the Covid issue. From information today, we know that, despite the US telling us that it would not breach our Covid regulations, as it did on 28 January, it did so again. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, confirmed to Deputy John Brady earlier today that the US breached regulations several times.

On 11 January, 59 US military personnel arrived at the airport but did not complete passenger locator forms. Again, on 23 January, 54 personnel who landed at Shannon did not present negative PCR tests or complete passenger location forms. That is in addition to the 48 US military personnel who stayed in Limerick overnight in hotels and went out for food.

This does not count the other two examples cited by Shannonwatch regarding 8 February and 28 January. On 28 January, 226 trips from an Omni Air International plane stayed overnight in a number of Limerick hotels. The events of 8 February are a really curious one. It involved a really small plane with seven people on board. According to the US, they were all crew, a completely ludicrous suggestion. One would not have seven crew on a plane that small.

There have been five breaches in the space of five weeks. It is completely unacceptable. US troops should not be in Shannon. I want to see our civilian airport grow. I do not want to see US military troops using the airport to wage wars of terror across the Middle East. We can park that for a second, however. The Covid issues are outrageous at this point. The US response of apologising and that it will not do it again has been blown out of the water five times in five weeks. What is the Minister of State going to do about it? Those troops are putting all of us at risk to Covid across the mid-west. The Covid infection figures in Limerick are not good right now and are much higher than those in other parts of the country. We cannot have this happening again. What steps will the Government take to make sure it does not happen again?

The debate on Monday regrettably will be curtailed to two and a half hours for all Stages. It puzzles me why we do not incorporate mandatory quarantine across a much wider range of countries. It also worries me. We know from listening to scientists that these variants are a particular threat to the progress we are making in getting the numbers down and, hopefully, to opening up society. It is not going to work if we are not serious about mandatory quarantine, however. One cannot be serious if one is picking just some countries. There is no rationale to how some countries are not excluded, including some of the most prevalent countries in terms of Covid. I would welcome the Minister of State's comments on that.