‘We took Aer Lingus as far as we could’

SENIOR management at Aer Lingus resigned as they believed their plans for the airline were losing support and they felt they “had brought Aer Lingus as far as they could”, it has emerged.

The Department of Transport said yesterday significant progress would be made before Christmas on the future of the airline and a cabinet sub-committee is due to meet today to look at the options open to the company before reporting to the Government.

The shock resignations last week of Aer Lingus CEO Willie Walsh, Chief Operating Officer, Seamus Kearney and Brian Dunne, Chief Financial Officer has put mounting pressure on the Government to decide whether future expansion of the airline will be achieved thorough privatisation or further Government investment.

The airline’s largest union, SIPTU, said yesterday it would be strongly opposed to any moves towards privatisation.

In an RTÉ interview yesterday, Mr Walsh said his resignation was final and flatly denied the move was designed to force the Government to decide on future funding. “I most definitely was not putting a gun to the Government’s to get a decision. When I decided to resign it was final. It will not matter if the issues we felt needed to be addressed are addressed in six months before we leave. There is absolutely no way back,” Mr Walsh said.

“I think it had become clear to us as a management group in recent times that there was growing unease at what it was we were doing. We had no desire to create any difficulties or any problems so analysing it we felt that we’d probably taken it as far as we could possibly take it.”

Whether he is at the helm of the company or not, he said, the unions still have challenging times ahead.

“I think the unions will recognise that the issues that we were addressing and problems we were tackling haven’t gone away. They’re still there and someone else will have to tackle them. Aer Lingus has to be more competitive. It has to expand and get access to funding to facilitate that expansion. The competition will just get stronger and stronger,” he said.

Mr Walsh denied his planned stewardship of the company for six months after tendering his resignation could serve to paralyse its future development.

The outgoing CEO also said he had made no future plans despite reports of a flood of job offers.