DAA chair says autonomy will kill off airports

THE chairman of the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) has warned that if the country’s three state airports secure their autonomy, the country will end up with one airport after not very long.

In an address at an event organised by the Shannon Chamber of Commerce, David Dilger also described the Government’s aviation policy of supporting the regional airport network as “little short of lunatic”.

The outgoing Government deferred a decision on the ownership of the three state airports to this year.

Addressing business interests, Mr Dilger, commenting on the ownership issue, said: “My view is that if our three national airports are set up on a completely independent footing under separate ownership, we will have a wonderful dog fight for a short time.”

“We will start competing with each other on the only thing that really matters, which is price. We will continue to undercut each other and in that kind of low cost uneconomic way, my suspicion is that this country will end up with one airport after not very long.”

Mr Dilger said that if the incoming government does choose to give each of the three airports their autonomy, “then that is exactly the way it will be, but we shouldn’t ignore the lessons we have learned from other industries in Ireland where in the futile name of competition on a tiny little island, we set nationals upon nationals undercutting each other, selling their services at an uneconomic cost, and ensuring that the weakest of them cannot survive”

On the Government subsidising the regional airport network, Mr Dilger said “I believe Ireland’s aviation policy in relation to the 14 airport infrastructures we as taxpayers have invested in is little short of lunatic.”

Mr Dilger stated that along with funding infrastructural investments at the regional airports, the Government at the same time is spending €100 million per annum in taxpayers’ money on Public Service Obligations (PSOs) routes.

“This is a ludicrous way for us to spend our non-existent taxpayers’ money. Not only are we creating sub-scale, uneconomic inefficient entities with which to service our aviation industry, but we are depriving airports like Shannon of the marginal passengers, something like 250,000 or 300,000 of them,” he said.