The new terminal at Cork International Airport opens to departing passengers from today, just over two weeks since it opened to arriving passengers on August 1st.
Construction work started on the €160 million terminal in mid-2003 and it was originally scheduled to open in late 2005, but this was repeatedly delayed.
From this morning, operations will cease at the existing terminal and all flights will operate from the new terminal.
The new Cork terminal is three times the size of the original airport.
The 25,000sq m building is designed to cater for three million passengers a year, with the capacity to expand to take up to five million.
The existing 11,000sq m building was designed for 1.1 million passengers but had been catering for 2.6 million.
The website launched to coincide with the opening of the terminal is www.corkairport.com
It provides real-time arrival and departure information for the 40 scheduled services and more than 20 charter destinations served from the airport.
Special new sections on regional tourism, city breaks and business-to-business have been added.
The opening of the new facility has aroused heated debate between the Government and the airport authorities on the issue of the terminal's €160 million debt.
Cork Airport Authority was promised in 2003 by the then minister for transport Séamus Brennan that it would take over the airport debt-free when Cork, Shannon and Dublin airports were split up and made independent.
However, the Dublin Airport Authority has consistently stated that the cost of development works at Cork should be borne by the Cork board.
Last month, Minister for Transport Martin Cullen said he was hopeful that the issue of Cork airport's debt would be resolved before the end of the summer following the presentation of a report by consultants BDO Simpson Xavier to his department.