Why Aer Rianta is failing the regions

What effect will Aer Rianta's plan to build a new £300 million terminal at Dublin Airport have on balanced regional development? Undoubtedly, there is unprecedented traffic through Dublin airport. Official figures for passengers at Dublin airport for 1999 were about 13 million.

However, the 1999 figure for passenger throughput at all three Aer Rianta airports, Dublin, Cork and Shannon, is just 16.5 million. Which reveals a familiar pattern: a massive over-concentration of facilities and growth in the Dublin area where the infrastructure is severely hampered.

Last week the Labour Party document, Towards a National Spatial Plan, addressed the need to develop regional airports to support regional development. Unfortunately the plan, while addressing regional imbalance and particularly the need to curb growth in the Dublin region, was light on the need to curb growth at Dublin airport.

The Fitzpatrick Report of 1999 which informed the National Development Plan, clearly illustrated the large tracts of this island which are an unacceptable number of hours travel-time from an airport.

The chairman of Waterford Regional Airport, Dr Cormac McNamara, has said he personally knows of foreign companies which want to invest in the southeast but don't because of the drive to Dublin Airport which can take between three-and-a-half and five hours. That Dr McNamara has to make this point in an argument for relatively minor funding while Dublin Airport continues to secure the lion's share of Government cash is surely wrong.

Similarly, the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance have spoken of ending years of regional imbalance in the border, midlands and western (BMW) region through the National Development Plan. But again a businessman travelling to Knock Airport in Co Mayo, who is stuck behind a tractor on a winding country lane, may be sceptical. In the absence of a strategic motorway to the northwest or the electricity infrastructure or the air access, where does balanced regional development fit?

Last week's Labour Party document speaks of fostering crossborder relations in light of the Belfast Agreement, particularly developing Enniskillen as the regional hub it would have been had it not been for partition. But where is the plan for joint investment to develop the regional airport at Enniskillen?

In addition, we are used to the regional airports at Kerry and Galway struggling to keep going. The Government's argument seems to be that if these regions can support an airport then why isn't private enterprise stepping in to fill the vacuum? The answer to that is to ask why the Government is subsidising some airports and not others. Why does Air Rianta not buy Galway airport and invest its millions there? Galway has the critical mass of people and educational services, foreign investment, comparatively good living standards, rail, water and broadband communications. One could make the same argument for Athlone, the constituency of the Minister for Public Enterprise, Mrs O'Rourke, which has the added advantage of being centrally located on a growth pole which stretches from Dublin as far as Athlone and which could act as a counter balance to Dublin, drawing traffic from Cos Meath, Westmeath or Kildare.

Following last year's chaotic scenes of overcrowding in the baggage hall, Aer Rianta, writing in the current issue of Visitor magazine, has this to say: "One of the biggest challenges facing Aer Rianta as airport managers is to cater for this growth while ensuring that the service standards offered to both airline and passenger customers at the three airports are maintained."

To quote from last week's Labour policy document: "Transport, and public transport in particular have been neglected for far too long in this country. The resources at our disposal now are such that neglect need not continue. This is critically important. Transport will be at the heart of future settlement and development patterns in this country. This principle is already recognised in the Strategic Planning Guidelines for the Dublin area. That they seem to be being ignored is proof of the challenge ahead. It is time to get this right."