Cork airport's debt to be resolved soon, says Cullen

Minister for Transport Martin Cullen is hopeful the issue of the Cork airport's debt will be resolved before the end of the summer following the presentation of a report by consultants, BDO Simpson Xavier to his department last week.

Mr Cullen said the report had been received by his department and was being examined by his advisers. The Minister said he had yet to read it but he expressed optimism that its proposal on airport debt would be accepted by Cork, Dublin and Shannon airports.

"The early indications to me, without reading it, are positive. There are good solutions all around. I think it's positive for each of the individual airports and nationally as well," said Mr Cullen during a visit to Cork yesterday.

Mr Cullen declined to be specific about a date for the resolution of the issue as there are still a number of meetings to take place between the various parties but he admitted that he "wanted to see it resolved as quickly as possible, hopefully before the end of the summer".

He had earlier stressed that the Government objective in breaking up Aer Rianta was to ensure that Cork along with Dublin and Shannon airports had "a strong commercial mandate that will make it viable into the future" and that remained the Government's position.

Mr Cullen's predecessor, Séamus Brennan, pledged in July 2003 that all contractual arrangements involving Aer Rianta would be transferred to the Dublin Airport Authority when the three airports were split up and made independent entities.

But Mr Cullen insisted that there was no inconsistency between his position and that of his predecessor.

He said any deal was always going to have to be in line with company law.

Pressed on the issue of the Cork debt, Mr Cullen said he would not deal with Cork "in isolation". "Cork has to be dealt with in the context of Dublin airport and Shannon airport and the separation of the three and there's a matter of law involved too.

"The debt has to be somewhere and we have to have development at Shannon and at Dublin as well, so what we have to make sure is that Cork is strong and commercially viable going into the future and I intend to see that through," he said.

Meanwhile, a Cork Airport Authority (CAA) spokeswoman confirmed yesterday that the CAA had taken possession of the new terminal building from builders, Rohcon last Friday.

Training for staff on the use of the new terminal was continuing.

According to the CAA spokeswoman, the terminal is expected to open initially to handle arrivals. That will happen within a couple of weeks.

It will then cater for selected sun charter departures before all departures are transferred to the new terminal later in the summer.

Construction on the new terminal began in mid-2003 and it had been originally scheduled to open in late 2005, but this was first deferred until early 2006 and then subsequently to May 2006.