Irish Election - Coverage of Irish Politics, News and Current Affairs

Two bits of business in this post.  First, the sharp-eyed squid has pointed out that the first hints of an Aer Lingus move to Belfast appeared not in mid-June but in late May.  Below, the rest of the Irish News story to which squid refers.  Second, another interesting thing from the NI media.  Willie Walsh noted as expressing [...]

If the Dail stays on schedule, ministerial questions will begin in about 10 minutes (link to live broadcast) at which time Noel Dempsey will be asked to explain the 6 week gap between his department knowing about the Shannon-Belfast Heathrow slot switch and him knowing about it.  Still unsolved, and perhaps to be explored in [...]

It is funny how Parties like to put stats across. From Fine Gael “4,100 fall in US trips to Ireland should sound alarm bells – Mitchell”. Now this figure is actually true there has been a fall of 4,100 to Ireland from the US. The strength of the Euro vs the Dollar being a factor [...]

In news that does not seem to be generally available yet, Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal is reporting (subs. req’d) that the European Commission has rejected the request from Aer Lingus to force Ryanair to sell its 29.4% stake in the company.  The key point – Philip Lowe, the EU’s director general for competition, said the [...]

Here’s the Tribune story with the key points from Noel Dempsey’s interview with them about Shannon-Heathrow. In remarks that are likely to inflame the crisis, at least in the short-term, Dempsey states that: Shannon-Heathrow is a lost cause for now (consistent with the imminent deadline to have a new route in place); that he will [...]

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 [...]

Here’s another shoe dropping in the SNN-LHR row.  Ryanair is putting Stansted flights from Belfast City (George Best).  4 a day.  They also want a runway expansion to facilitate additional flights from Belfast City as a new base.  As usual, every move can be spun various ways.  Aer Lingus will now claim vindication: that Ryanair [...]

It’s probably not on your regular websurfing list but the website of the Irish Stock Exchange has been very lively recently, as seemingly arcane company announcements can occasionally pertain to fallout from the US subprime mortgage crisis.  But sitting there today is Ryanair’s formal notification to the exchange that it is seeking an EGM, along [...]

A fairly comprehensive statement today from the up-to-now quiet Enda Kenny on SNN-LHR. Perhaps some of the time was spent reconciling the position that FG will now adopt with their non-opposition to the Aer Lingus privatization (although they had complaints at the time about how it was managed). A few interesting things in Enda’s statement, [...]

Here’s the text of the (hastily written?) press release from the Department of Transport following the Cabinet meeting on Shannon-Heathrow today.  The statement is mostly the familiar litany from the government and avoids the issue of the call for an Aer Lingus EGM or the purpose of the 25 percent shareholding.  But there might be [...]

Here’s an issue that has surfaced briefly at various times in the Shannon-Heathrow-Belfast dispute and has now been explicitly raised by IMPACT: is Belfast in Ireland?  We can probably all recall instances where one of the many usages for the two jurisdictions on the island has had a similar impact as fingernails being drawn across a [...]

Here’s an interesting profile from the Financial Times a few days ago of Padraig O’Ceidigh, now the chairman but at one time the hands-on businessman who developed Aer Arann out of its island service base into a decent sized regional point-to-point carrier.   It’s not clear whether this is the right model for Shannon, where long-haul [...]

After drifting a little bit the SNN-LHR controversy and the related issue of the Aer Lingus strike are heating up again this evening.   The latest non-Bertie non-Dempsey spokesperson for the government is Mary Hanafin — perhaps she was the only one around given the Leaving Cert results.  And the employee trust has spoken up.  This [...]

A dog that hadn’t barked up to now — Aer Lingus staff — is barking. Tonight brings news of a 48 hour strike by pilots next week, not in protest against the Shannon withdrawal per se, but the fact that new Belfast base is hiring pilots outside the collective bargaining contract. This arises from the [...]

An absolutely atrocious job by the RTE Radio News at One today. Dermot Ahern, in the course of an interview about Irish prisoners overseas, was asked (at about the 3:30 mark in his interview) about the Shannon-Heathrow route removal. In his response he (1) referred to the Irish Aid decentralisation to Shannon as example of [...]

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.