Mayday call to rescue 300 airport jobs
Reasons for the unfolding employment disaster remain disputed, but Tánaiste Mary Coughlan has long been suspected of running on empty, while Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary is fuelled by a highly combustible cocktail of self adoration and Government disdain.
Ms Coughlan seems to have been flying blind since being promoted to the post of Unemployment and (Lack of) Enterprise Minister 21 months ago.
The number of people wasting their lives on the dole has doubled under her watch and would now have passed the damning figure of 500,000 if mass emigration had not come back to haunt the national psyche with such a vengeance.
Just like Cindy Crawford famously declared she would not get out of bed for as little as $10,000, Ms Coughlan showed a similar inflated sense of her own worth when she made it clear she would not bother to pick up the phone for as little as 500 jobs.
“No, I certainly am not,” she haughtily declared when it was suggested personal intervention in the form of a call to Mr O’Leary might stop another 300 jobs going down the drain in the same way 200 have already been lost to a Scottish government that can barely believe its luck at the carelessness of its counterpart in Ireland.
To lose 200 jobs to Glasgow’s Prestwick Airport through Government inaction and red tape is bad enough, to lose 500 would be nothing short of economic treason on the Tánaiste’s part, which, no doubt, is why she was forced into making a speedy retreat and deigned to grant the Ryanair boss an audience.
Mr O’Leary is clearly enjoying the attention and pivotal position of power this spectacle has presented him with, allowing him to attack his old enemies at the Dublin Airport Authority, Aer Lingus and Fianna Fáil at will, but someone with Ms Coughlan’s woeful record on job creation has no room to allow pride to prevent her stopping another 300 positions haemorrhaging abroad — especially after her disasters at Dell, Cadbury’s and Waterford Crystal, to name just three.
But Ms Coughlan is not just content to give jobs to Britain, she also gave an interview to Britain’s BBC World yesterday, when in an almost delusional moment, she tried to explain away the scourge of mass emigration by insisting Irish young people were going abroad to “gain experience”.
Yes, Mary, but they’re having to flee the country to “gain experience” of something called a job and the dignity of labour.
Displaying a contortion of reality worthy of the North Korean regime’s top propagandists, the Tánaiste then declared the 60,000 young people forced out of Ireland in the past 18 months had gone because they either wanted to “have fun” abroad or because they had a PhD, or degree they wanted to use.
Yay! Three cheers for the brain drain, Mary. Good work!
With that level of thinking on display it is no wonder that so many hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs while Ms Coughlan has been in charge — the only mystery remains how she has kept her own job for so long.
IN the row about the jobs proposal, Hangar Six at Dublin Airport appears to have become the crucial issue.
Aircraft maintenance firm SR Technics operated from six hangars located on the north side of the airport. Hangar Six is the largest, being capable of accommodating two wide-bodied aircraft at the same time.
The Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) has made clear that Hangar Six is not up for grabs, as it was leased to Aer Lingus after SR Technics’ closure was announced last year.
However, the DAA says it is willing to build Ryanair a new hangar on airport grounds that will “replicate the facilities” available in Hangar Six.
Alternatively, the DAA says that Ryanair can be accommodated in other hangars that were previously used by SR Technics.
But Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary yesterday insisted it was Hangar Six or nothing.
Speaking on the Pat Kenny show on RTÉ Radio, Mr O’Leary insisted Aer Lingus could be moved out of the hangar as the airline was using it for smaller-scale maintenance which could be done in other hangars.
“They could be moved out of that,” he said of Aer Lingus. “The only reason they’re in there is the DAA want to block Ryanair.”
Needless to say, the DAA rejects that accusation, pointing to the contractual nature of the lease agreed with Aer Lingus.
Privately, Government sources believe it is no coincidence that Ryanair is fixated on a facility occupied by its main rival.
Their implication is clear: that Ryanair simply wants to cause trouble for Aer Lingus. But a spokeswoman for Ryanair last night said the only reason Micheal O’Leary wanted the facility was because its size met the airline’s requirements.
Asked why Ryanair was not prepared to entertain DAA’s offer of an identical, purpose-built hangar elsewhere on the airport campus, the spokeswoman replied: “Ryanair won’t deal with the DAA.”
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