Still no Shannon airport board

ABOLITION of Shannon Airport Authority and its sister board in Cork have now gone onto the trade union agenda being put to the Government in the national understanding talks, which are being revived this week ahead of the Budget.

A new Shannon Airport Authority was due to take office on September 16 but the airport is now left without a board because of the proposals from Transport Minister Noel Dempsey to reduce numbers on the boards in the interest of cost cutting, which  includes cutting the number of directors elected by workers. In Shannon’s case, the number has been officially reduced from four to two but actually is reducing from five because of the concession five years ago of adding a Dublin trade union representative to the Shannon authority.
To date, Minister Dempsey has only made two nominations to the Shannon board and since the minister’s instruction for cuts in representation, unions have held off from setting in motion the procedures for balloting union members in electing worker directors.
The minister’s order for board membership to be trimmed back prompted a backlash from SIPTU. Reacting to the claim from the department and the parent Dublin Airport Authority that the cost of running the boards were running to figures ranging from €2 million to €2.2 million.
Any prospect of the sides coming to a compromise has faded since SIPTU took its call for the abolition of the Shannon and Cork boards to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions where the SIPTU leader Jack O’Connor is the current president. What is now happening is that the call for the abolition of the boards has been incorporated into the proposals being put forward by the trade union movement in the national understanding discussions which are now shaping up, according to union sources.
The issue is being taken up by the Fine Gael Opposition. In response to questions from Clare’s Deputy Pat Breen and the party’s finance spokesman, Richard Bruton, the Transport Minister set out the changes proposed for the airport boards. However, questions from Deputy Breen on the cost of the boards and payments to directors were ruled out by the Ceann Comhairle on the grounds that these were commercial decisions for the Dublin Airport Authority.
Under the revised proposals as they now stand, the Shannon Authority would have nine members consisting of a chairperson, six members nominated by the minister, which would include a senior executive from the Dublin Airport Authority and two worker directors.
The chairman of the Shannon and Cork authorities would be nominated to the parent Dublin Airport Authority, which is to have 13 members including the DAA chief executive and four worker directors.
The minister has already named Ray Gray, the director of finance with the Dublin Airport Authority, as the representative of the parent body on the Shannon board. He has also nominated a member of the outgoing authority, Olivia Loughnane of Shannon Development, where she is manager of the Mid-West Task Force for re-appointment.
The inaugural chairman of the Shannon Airport Authority, Pat Shanahan, wrote to the minister asking not to be considered for re-appointment.