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Aer Lingus Blamed as Dromoland Pulls Shannon Investment Limerick County
Read more about: Clare, Connaught-Ulster, End of Shannon-Heathrow, Fianna Fail, Irish Politics, Limerick East, Limerick West, Tipperary North, Transport
Moving the Heathrow slots from Shannon (a 4 hour drive from Dublin and airport of choice for those in Limerick, Clare, Tipperary, much of Connacht and the North West) to Belfast (now a two hour leisurely drive from Dublin Airport thanks to the M1 looks like it has had its first victim.
The Dromoland Castle development has decided to shelve investment of 25 million and 50 million respectively.
As one of the primary attractions to tourists in the area thanks to its ownership of Doonbeg aswell, this is a clear indication that this decision could end up playing on for a long time. The decision of Aer Lingus is one which could never have been overridden by government, though the curious support for them by Mr. O Leary may have been enough. The national development model, dependent as it is on FDI now has three airports which access Heathrow regularly. Two of them in the East and North East on the coast and another on the South coast.
This deeply unbalances development potential within the Shannon region as well as Connacht counties hoping to use Shannon to bring in FDI.
The government would surely have been briefed on the dangers to the main airports of losing the slots. Those documents are sitting on desks somewhere and some quantification of potential loss made clear. There will be little move on this, though surely there is no need to hamstring Shannon and any national spatial strategy and development plan while moving slots to Belfast.
Ah well, at least you can get the train there soon.
A dreadful Cabinet performance. I see RTE today again quoting Tony Killeen
The Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Tony Killeen, has insisted that no information about the removal of Aer Lingus services was made available to the Government before the weekend.
Amazing that he seems to be pointman — a seemingly invisible Minister for Transport along with nearly everyone else in government. Apart from anything else, it’s now impossible to see the rationale for the 25 percent govt stake in the airline. If it’s not for something like this, what is it for?
Cian, I was looking for where I had posted on this before and only found it last night, it was well more than 12 months ago!
http://dansullivan.blogspot.com/2006/06/floating-aer-lingus.html
As Simon noted at the time there was nothing to stop the government privatising the airline while retaining control of the slots to ensure that the strategic interest of an island nation was maintained. Instead the government went for the lazy option.
What are we to take out of this? That Dromoland Castle depends on Aer Lingus kidnapping tourists in Heathrow who would otherwise head for Lanzarotte?
The stopover mentality is clearly alive and well.
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