Warm reception for seaplane at Ballyvaughan

A MEETING between members of the local community in Ballyvaughan and Harbour Air Ireland took place on Tuesday night, with the company reportedly receiving quite a warm reception.
The company is looking to introduce seaplane services between a number of different locations including Galway, the Aran Islands, Limerick and Dublin.
Director Emelyn Heaps said they were very well received. “It was a credit to the people of Ballyvaughan; there was a very good crowd there and they put excellent questions to us. There was no ranting. We left it with them, we’re willing to look at bringing business there,” he said.
He said they hadn’t been looking at Ballyvaughan as a base but had been impressed by the enthusiasm shown. “We were asked how long people coming would stay and what we said was we would bring people to the quay wall and then it was up to them to get people to stay. For us, it was a breath of fresh air to meet a community that is interested in developing tourism and that are interested in using us for a section of it,” he added.
Conor Fahy of the Ballyvaughan Community Development Group said the mood of the meeting had been relatively favourable towards developing flights from the area. “There were no real objections to it. There was one line of questioning about noise but it was satisfactorily dealt with.”
The Aran Islands is one of the locations where the company are looking to develop flights from and Mr Fahy said people developing links with the islands could have major local benefits. “They are proposing to develop a network around Ireland, bringing tourists from A to B. At the meeting, people were keen on having links to the Aran Islands, which is a major market and tourists could be there in minutes. They were also positive about having links to Galway, Limerick and Dublin too,” Mr Fahy said.
He said there aren’t any apparent visual or environmental concerns and that any noise generated at the time of take off or landing is likely to be limited.