Humbert school:A west of Ireland Fianna Fáil TD has called on the Government to buy the Aer Lingus slots at Heathrow airport which are currently on lease to other airlines, and to allocate them to west of Ireland airports.
Speaking at the opening session of the Humbert School 2007 in Ballina last night, newly elected local TD Dara Colleary was applauded when he argued, "given that the Government can buy out the toll booths on the M50", they should be able to do so.
He suggested the slots might then be administered by an agency such as the Western Development Commission. He called for greater emphasis "on facts and figures, and less on Armageddon" in the debate on Shannon and urged those taking part to "keep to rational arguments". He also called for radical rationalisation of development agencies in the west.
Liam Scollan, managing director at Ireland West Airport (Knock), told the school that no other facet of Ireland's infrastructure landscape showed up more starkly "the massive imbalances between regions than the field of aviation".
He added, however, that a resolution to the Shannon-Heathrow issue was not to ask Aer Lingus to go back on its decision to move to Belfast, nor should it be a midwest region-focused resolution.
"The entire west of Ireland faces one common challenge here and that challenge is to sustain all-year-round services to a key hub that gives worldwide connectivity," he said. He suggested people might look to the example set by Shannon Development decades ago and noted how Knock had "successfully launched our transatlantic services which have been flying near full from here all summer".
He continued, "We have shown that without government intervention it is possible to get into this market by partnering with European-based low-cost carriers like Flyglobespan, but again the challenge is to sustain all-year-round services, something which most airlines demand if their investment is to be profitable."
Fr Harry Bohan of the Céifin Centre at Ennis, Co Clare, asked why the move by Aer Lingus had not been anticipated. "Why have we not been proactive in ensuring our economy is not dependent on one service provider and the availability of a few slots at Heathrow?" he asked.
It was "time that we, in this region, took ownership of our airport so that we can plan for the future and be in a position to pre-empt and address problems coming down the line".