Irish Election are pleased to announce our collection of Irish 
Shannon: Let the distraction politics begin
Read more about: Connaught-Ulster, Fianna Fail, Munster, Transport, Travel & Tourism
As predicted a couple of days ago, the first significant government statement on the Shannon-Heathrow controversy is a classic of distractions and selective or irrelevant claims. A debunking of the Department of Transport’s response which accompanied Noel “Father Ted” Dempsey’s statement below.
The Irish Times reports the essence of the government’s analysis –
The Department of Transport said Shannon was connected to Gatwick, Stansted and Luton from winter 2007 and that at Gatwick 90 airlines provided services to over 200 destinations, at Stansted 34 airlines provided services to 160 destinations, and from Luton 20 airlines provided services to 81 destinations.
“In 2006, there were 157,000 roundtrip passengers between Shannon and Heathrow, with 75 per cent of those terminating their travel in London. For much of the catchment area of Shannon there are also alternative travel options from Kerry, Knock, Cork, Galway and indeed Dublin.”
One bit of rubbish after another. Gatwick, Stansted and Luton are holiday airports. Most of the international flights from there go to European or North African tourist spots. They’re for the weekend city breaks and package holidays. But for any serious long-haul destinations, there’s only Heathrow. Michael O’Leary will no doubt lean back in his armchair in Mullingar and laugh to see his Stansted hub being counted as part of Shannon’s continuing attractions. They also present no statistics on how many of the Shannon flights to the non-Heathrow airports are codeshares — an essential convenience in avoiding airport hassle. Remember Ryanair for all practical purposes will only connect to its own flights so counting them as part of the connectivity to other airlines is false.
But the main trickery is with the actual numbers. Since we know that the Shannon-Heathrow flights account for 320,000 passengers, they’re getting their 157,000 number by only counting return trips originating from Shannon. And what a shock: most people who live in the area are going as far as London and then come back home (and that’s still 25 percent looking another option). But the issue for the businesses is the number of people who come in from other destinations on holiday and business trips. 75 percent of outbound Shannon trips were as far as London. Does the government expect us to believe that 75 percent of inbound Shannon trips were from people living in London? Maybe to the careless reader, and maybe in Willie O’Dea’s next press statement on the affair. Hopefully the rest of the region is cleverer than that.
A nice bit of anti-spin.
I suppose it would be out of the question to point out that the Shannon lobby has always been comfortable with the idea that Cork people should hop into their cars if they needed to go to the US. Strangely, when its suggested they can make the same journey for access to Heathrow, suddenly its the end of the world. They were happy in the past to say ’sure, on a long haul journey its only adding a little extra time and trouble’. Precisely the same logic would seem to apply if, as seems to be suggested, access to Heathrow is about connectivity elsewhere.
As a side issue, I’d be curious of how much of the SNN-LHR traffic is to avail of services kept out of Dublin by the operation of the stopover.
The Shannon lobby is, and always has been, completely self serving and heedless of the costs they have imposed on the rest of the country. Dempsey’s statement does include spin. But that spin just reflects that the national mood is against hamstringing the nation with some stupid and expensive stopover-style response to the Aer Lingus decision. The time for pandering to Shannon is gone.
schuhart, I always thought the stopover was a bad idea as did many people who live and work in and around the Western seaboard and who have no direct finance interest in the running of the airport itself. Does that mean we can’t point out that disposing of a strategic national interest in access to a major hub without any safeguards to ensure was bad planning on the part of the vendor? And the Shannon lobby is in fact the Dublin lobby too as the airport is still part of the DAA.
And what is to stop Aer Lingus pulling their Heathrow slots out of Cork and Dublin too in favour of potentially more profitable routes?