Shannon Wants Movement

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Irish Voice News

Shannon Wants Movement

October 25, 2007

By Paddy Clancy

THE executive chairman of the Shannon Airport Authority, Pat Shanahan, has resigned over Aer Lingus’s decision to withdraw its Heathrow slots from the airport.

He was especially annoyed that “very critical, material information” had been withheld from Shannon by the Dublin Airport Authority for up to eight weeks.

“If we had known, we may have been able to do something about it,” he said.

Furious Shannon Airport managers want the government to speed up the process of splitting up the state’s three airports after the discovery that Dublin Airport chiefs knew last June that Aer Lingus was considering dumping the Shannon-Heathrow link but told nobody.

That’s the latest twist in the escalating dispute over Aer Lingus

switching its London Heathrow flights from Shannon to Belfast. It follows closely on an admission that senior officials at the Department of Transport were also aware since mid-June of plans by Aer Lingus to axe its Shannon-Heathrow services. This was more than six weeks before the government claims it was officially informed of the controversial decision by the airline.

The Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) has insisted it could not reveal what it knew because Aer Lingus supplied the information in strict confidence.

The Aer Lingus decision sparked huge public controversy and intense opposition in the mid-west when it was eventually announced publicly in August. Protests against it included a march of several thousand business interests and other campaigners in Limerick last Saturday.

Now Shannon’s ruling board want the government to speed up its plan to establish Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports as independent companies.

Shannon’s plan depends on it cutting its costs. Earlier this year it completed a deal with trade unions that will pave the way for this.

The discovery that the Department of Transport was first informed of Aer Lingus’s plans to close the route on or before June 13 was made in a search of documents obtained by the Irish Examiner under the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents showed that a senior manager at the airline informed the department of its plans for the new base at Belfast and outlined the serious implications for the Shannon-Heathrow route on June 13.

In a rare explanation provided as part of a Freedom of Information request, the department claimed the information was never forwarded to Transport Minister Noel Dempsey despite a note being drafted for his attention.

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