The storm over the end of the Shannon-Heathrow service has the potential to cause a political mess and finding a compromise to keep everyone happy will not be easy, writes Stephen Collins, Political Editor
The intensity of the row over the Aer Lingus decision to transfer its Heathrow service from Shannon to Belfast appears to have taken the Government completely by surprise. Its failure to come up with any detailed reaction, five days after the decision was first made public, indicates just how much difficulty it is having in devising a response to this August political storm.
When a Cabinet Minister, Willie O'Dea, enters the fray bandying Cromwell's name about, in association with the Aer Lingus chief executive, Dermot Mannion, it is clear that the Government has a localised political crisis on its hands.
Not to be outdone by the prior intervention of Clare junior Minister Tony Killeen, and a range of Fianna Fáil backbenchers across the region, O'Dea upped the stakes by saying that he had been in contact with both the Taoiseach and the Minister for Transport, Noel Dempsey, about the matter.
It is one thing for Fianna Fáil backbenchers to distance themselves from their own Government but it is quite another thing for a Minister, bound by collective Cabinet responsibility, to go public and broadcast his unhappiness with the trend of official policy.
Of course the Minister has attacked Aer Lingus and its management rather than his own Government but that only begs the question about what the Government's view is and why the Taoiseach has chosen to adopt an uncharacteristic vow of silence on the matter.
Earlier in the week a Government spokesman said that while the Aer Lingus decision to move its Heathrow operations from Shannon to Belfast was very unfortunate for the mid-west region, it was a commercial decision for Aer Lingus.
However, as one Fianna Fáil backbencher after another from the mid-west denounced the decision and demanded that the Government use its influence as the major shareholder to reverse it, there was no follow up elaboration of the Government's position.
There was only silence.
That silence prompted even greater outrage from Fianna Fáil TDs and from the Opposition parties and it created the impression that the Government simply did not know what to do.
It is not as if the Taoiseach and his key Ministers were out of the country. Bertie Ahern is in Kerry and let it be known that he is dealing with issues as they arise. The Minister for Transport is also in the country.
"They are very much across this issue," said one Government source, who added frankly: "The questions are obvious but the answers less so." The bottom line is that Aer Lingus made a commercial decision in the long-term commercial interests of the airline and, whatever about the outrage in the mid-west, it would be very hard to justify Government interference, even though it is still a major shareholder in the company.
The other crucial point is that the Aer Lingus decision to develop a serious presence in Belfast fits in neatly with the Government's all-island strategy.
The whole thrust of Government policy, as part of its ongoing Northern Ireland strategy, is to develop ever closer economic links between the two parts of the island. The thinking behind this is not purely economic but political as well and it fits in neatly with Fianna Fáil's long-term goal of a united Ireland. The mystery is not why the Aer Lingus move happened but why the Government appears to have been so taken aback by the reaction.
Having pandered to the Shannon lobby for decades on the transatlantic stopover, it should have come as no surprise that all the local political and business interests would come together to protect the profitable Heathrow link. The timing of the announcement just after the August bank holiday, gave the impression of an attempt to sneak the decision through when nobody was looking. If anything, that only made the vehemence of the reaction all that much stronger.
There is now potential for a real political mess over the decision. The two Fianna Fáil Ministers and the five backbenchers who have vented their emotions about the decision are being taunted by the Opposition to prove their sincerity by really standing up to their own Government.
There is even a danger that some of them will talk themselves on to a political hook that may be difficult to get off.
Of course they may all be saved by the kind of political compromise that the Taoiseach is a dab hand at formulating.
While he is staying silent in public, it is a safe bet to assume that he is doing all he can behind the scenes to cobble together a compromise that will leave Aer Lingus free to pursue its Belfast strategy while moving simultaneously to some row back on Shannon.
Finding a compromise that will keep everybody happy at this stage will not be easy.