IN JULY 1993, the big industrial story was the crisis at Aer Lingus. The company was shedding 1,500 jobs at the airline and its aircraft maintenance subsidiary TEAM. North Dublin faced a crisis every bit as grave as that caused by the current Packard closure, and Labour TDs in the capital were threatening to vote against the Fianna Fail Labour coalition if it approved the redundancy programme. In the event, four TDs did just that and were expelled, temporarily, from the parliamentary party.
It was urgent that the Government be seen to be doing something to create alternative jobs for those facing the dole. The then Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Mr Quinn, set up a task force.
The task force produced an interim report in May 1994 and a final report in January 1995. Neither has been published.
While some elements of the final report have been implemented, there has been little progress on most of the recommendations, and one of them that the Light Rail Transit system be extended to Dublin Airport has been rejected.
A major handicap for the Enterprise Development Task Force (ETF) was that it had no budget. Aer Lingus provided a meeting room and secretarial assistance. Later, it paid the salary of a full time project director, Mr Hugh Doyle, for nine months. The Government then paid the wages for a further three after strong representations from the ETF.
The ETF decided to limit its objectives. Nevertheless, it had considerable expertise and commitment within its part time membership. This included representatives of Aer Lingus, Aer Rianta, FAS, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Fingal County Council, Forbairt, Amdahl Ireland and the Department of Enterprise and Employment.
It organised seminars for departing Aer Lingus staff, set up workshops in entrepreneurship and became directly involved in establishing a laser cutting enterprise that employed 20 people.
Its members have been frustrated at the Government's failure to publish its main recommendations.
Progress has been made on some of them, but it has been painstakingly slow. For instance, the ETF recommended that either the Church of Ireland's Old Boro National School or Milton Hall be used as the site for a new enterprise centre.
In its final report, in January 1995, the ETF said that the Minister for Enterprise and Employment should immediately approve and fund the centre. The Old Boro school has recently been identified as the most suitable site, but it cannot be developed until an alternative premises has been found for the school.
The report called for the establishment of a major industrial park as a matter of urgency, pointing out that it takes five to seven years to complete such a development. But it was only last October that 48 acres were acquired by Forfas/IDA Ireland. Planning permission is now being sought from Fingal County Council to have private developers build two advance factories there.
Perhaps the biggest disappointments were the Government's decision not to include Dublin Airport in the LRT system, and its failure to even make a decision on the proposal to establish a pilot and technical training school at Gormanston.
The report said that the Aer Lingus subsidiary PARC Aviation had commissioned a study to determine the feasibility of establishing a national air academy and recommended Gormanston.
Such a centre would allow Aer Lingus and Ryanair pilots to be trained at home, says the ETF, and could generate a high level of foreign earnings.
On the LRT, the task force wrote to the Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications, Mr Lowry, in May 1994, pointing out the importance of the light rail link for maximising the employment potential of Dublin Airport. According to the report, all it received back was a formal acknowledgment.
A number of TDs have raised the issue of the report in the Dail from time to time and have been promised an early publication. The latest is Mr Sean Haughey of Fianna Fail.
He has been told the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Mr Bruton, now hopes to publish the report later this month.
Mr Haughey said he could not understand the reason for delaying the publication for well over a year. "At least the publication of the report would allow a debate to take place on its recommendations and create some momentum to the job creation process," he said.
"At a time of such high unemployment it is disgraceful that the Government are sitting on a report that could have major benefits for the economy of north Dublin."