The Dublin Airport Authority is not proposing to pay the Government, its sole shareholder, any dividend for 2004, The Irish Times has learned.
The authority will announce its official results in Dublin this Wednesday, but at this point its board of directors has decided not to propose a dividend, normally paid to the Department of Finance.
The decision will come as a surprise considering the increase in profitability at the company in 2004, which is made up of Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports. All three airports are currently preparing detailed business plans. Once these are completed and approved by the Government the airports will become fully autonomous.
Aer Rianta, the predecessor of the Dublin Airport Authority, declared and paid a dividend of €7.2 million to the Department of Finance in respect of the 2002 results.
At this time last year the directors of Aer Rianta proposed a final dividend of €6.1 million in respect of the year ended December 31st 2003. In reference to 2004 a spokesman for the authority yesterday declined to comment.
The payment of dividends by State companies to the Department of Finance is often symbolic in nature. The amounts are usually relatively small, although the ESB paid a dividend of €67 million for 2003.
The Department of Finance has been pressing State companies in recent years for a larger share of their after-tax profits. But many companies, including RTÉ and An Post, have not been in a position to declare a dividend. State-owned companies involved in major capital investment programmes sometimes decide against paying out dividends for a period.
The 2004 annual results will be unveiled on Wednesday by the authority's chairman, Gary McGann. He recently warned that while passenger numbers were rising at Dublin, the authority needed to exit from loss making activities. He also said the current regulatory regime and the statutory cap on airport charges was a major limit on expansion at Dublin airport.
Mr McGann also told an Oireachtas committee meeting recently that something needed to be done about the Great Southern Hotel group which has reported four years of successive trading losses. He said the future of the hotels was "very bleak".
It is understood the hotels will report a loss of more than €2 million for 2004, with turnover almost unchanged from 2003.
Yesterday Fianna Fáil TD Jim Glennon questioned the wisdom of the Dublin Airport Authority building a new terminal on the north apron site. He said this would involve the costly demolition of various hangars, particularly those owned by maintenance firm SR Technics.
Mr Glennon said he wanted to know what plans SR Technics had to safeguard the jobs of the 1,2000 employees at the firm if major demolition and relocation work was needed.
Last week Minister for Transport Martin Cullen said he wanted the authority to build the new terminal facility, but he said it was still open for debate about who would operate the facility.
Private businessman Ulick McEvaddy is expected to write to the Government this week threatening legal action if it does not open the runway facilities at Dublin to other companies.
He believes any awarding of a contract to the Dublin Airport Authority would be a contravention of the Treaty of Rome, which governs the operation of the EU.
