Set-up of Shannon Airport Management Authority unlikely before next year

The setting up of the new Shannon Airport Management Authority is unlikely to take place before next year. Following a query from Clare County Council, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Leo Varadkar, said the steering group will submit its recommendations to him and the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton “before the end of the year”. The ministers will then “bring forward detailed proposals to Government”.

Clare County Council adopted a motion in July agreeing to contact Minister Varadkar and ask for a “timeline for the setting up of the new Shannon Airport Management Authority”.

He responded stating the Government had taken a decision in principle to separate Shannon Airport from the Dublin Airport Authority and “bring it together with a restructured Shannon Development to create a new entity with a commercial mandate in public ownership”.

He said he expected the group to submit its recommendations before the end of the year. After that the ministers would move with proposals to Government.

Independent Councillor PJ Ryan proposed the motion to Clare County Council at its July meeting. He said when councillors met with Minister Varadkar last year, he understood it would be “sorted by year end, then that became March, then May, then the end of June, then September and now the end of the year.”
Councillor Ryan said the delays were causing “uncertainty”.

“All the airlines and the people booking holidays are doing their business now for next year and possibly for 2014 and I reckon Shannon is going to lose out on that business because they don’t know where they are or what their position is. No one in Shannon can do their business now because Shannon is more or less in a limbo state. It has to be taken into account that the area that we are in depends on the tourist trade with Bunratty, Knappogue, the Cliffs of Moher. Not alone will Shannon Airport lose out but so will the tourist trade, the hotels and the guesthouses in the area. They will all lose out because the future of Shannon is not secure and we don’t know where we are with it,” he added.

The Shannon area councillor said he is disappointed by Minister Varadkar’s response.

“I am disappointed, absolutely, when we spoke to him last year I thought he sounded like a minister who would bring things on, who could see the problem of the three airports being tied together. For some reason, something or somebody along the line is throwing a spanner in the works,” Councillor Ryan concluded.