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

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 [...]

Who ever thinks corporations are all about the Shareholders is wrong. According to Ryanair they own 25% of the company the government 25% and the unions and workers about 20%. So that means 70% of the shareholders are against this move. So obviously this is not all about the shareholders. Ryanair have promised more flights [...]

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 [...]

So Willie comes out and says how terrible this whole Shannon thing is. Why did it take him 8 days to come out with that. Something tells me he was hoping it would blow over. Afraid not Willie the ball was dropped on this. Richard Delevan has an excellent piece in the tribune about it [...]

I see today that the Berkeley Court and Jury’s Ballsbridge have closed for renovations. When I mean renovations, I mean they are going to be completely knocked down and a large complex of apartments are going to be built there.
The original plans were pretty massive and were vetoed by the council. I was [...]

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 [...]

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.

It finally happened, the talk, focus and genuine uproar in more than three counties drew the government minister in charge to comment after four days. Yeah, it took Noel ‘Dialup’ Dempsey four days to figure out that people in Limerick, Clare, Tipp, Galway and other areas surrounding the West would be pissed off at losing [...]

Ongoing attempts to quantify the damage done by the Aer Lingus pullout suggest that 10,000 jobs may be at risk. Its primarily an issue of infrastructure and access to the region, which has become heavily populated with FDI and multinational companies thanks to Shannon Development. Fianna Fail is doing the usual trick of providing its [...]

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 [...]

A day after Michael O’Leary’s letter to the government proposing a joint call for Aer Lingus to retain its Heathrow service from Shannon, Michael Noonan TD puts pen to paper to write an actual letter to Willie Walsh, British Airways chief executive, to ask him to consider a Shannon-Heathrow service. Does this move the [...]

What does a company do when a majority of its ownership wants to pursue a particular policy? This is the issue that Aer Lingus in theory faces with 50.3 percent of its ownership claiming that the Shannon-Heathrow route should be maintained. Thus the hot potato that Michael O’Leary has tossed towards the government.

Without doubt someone some where more then likely here will say that the reason that Aer Lingus is leaving Shannon is because of privatization of the airline. And indeed that is the case. The reason that Aer Lingus is leaving Shannon is because Shannon is a Airport outside a city with a population of [...]

Minister John Gormley recieved a letter from chairman of the Petitions Committee in the EU Parliament. The letter suggests that building on the M3 should be halted following the findings made at Lismullen earlier this year.
The site at Lismullen is a National Monument but as was reported earlier, the recommendation of the National Museum was to preserve [...]

The EU released a statement this afternoon outlining that it is to proceed with an investigation into the practice of subsidising Dublin Bus and CIE generally. Though the commission point out that they are only investigating they do outline three areas of concern to them where Ireland may be breaking EU law. These are;

Compensation provided [...]