Bertie’s Shannon report: kick to touch

The departments of an Taoiseach and transport have made available the report of senior officials on the Shannon-Heathrow route along with a press release from the government  summarising the report and outlining next steps.  The press release is the usual blather and jargon but the detailed report is actually a little more substantive, indicating that not everything got lost in a bureaucratic committee.  Some key points:

The report abandons the original department of transport talking point that most travellers use Shannon-Heathrow for roundtrips terminating in Heathrow.  A fuller picture shows that one third of passengers use it for connections, and nearly one third of those are business travellers.  IDA clients figure prominently in that latter group so the threat to industrial development is real.

Similarly, the original talking point ignored the issue of inbound passengers who connect through Heathrow.  The report acknowledges a big problem here for Americans doing a Britain-Ireland trip who want to directly get to the west of Ireland from London.  Apparently this group tends to be big spenders so they will be a loss. 

Inbound travellers to the west forced into connecting through Dublin are adversely affected by the absence of an evening service from Dublin to Shannon.  Thus a trip to the west now risks involving an overnight stay in Dublin.

The problem with the report is that it holds out an Atlantic corridor as the long-term solution, although is also supports efforts of Shannon to get a new Heathrow service.  But is the Atlantic corridor a pipe dream?  How can it compete with the Belfast-Dublin corridor?  Note that without a hint of irony, Bertie Ahern was in Naas today opening a new factory while the Dail debated Shannon and there was a major job loss announcement there (Tyco). 

Some of the proposals are worthy but merely repetitions of ideas already out there, such as the extension of Limerick City’s boundaries, better road connections between the big towns, and more broadband.   But nothing really radical is suggested, such as more powerful local or regional authorities that could set about designing and implementing their own competitiveness strategy and not wait for the crumbs off the Dublin table.

So what is the actual strategy?  Hope to God that Shannon can get British Midland in, or that enough people can be placated with promises of development projects.  The latter seems unlikely.