Turbulent times for board

THE board at Cork Airport has had a turbulent few years battling against resignations and controversy.

It was set up following the break-up of Aer Rianta and was set the task of preparing a business plan for the airport once separation from the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) was finalised.

The annual wage bill for the board is €72,000 and according to the airport it meets every six to eight weeks.

Sources close to the board said, however, that it has little day-to-day power and no matter what decisions it makes “everything has to be sanctioned by Dublin”.

Chairman of the board is former Bord Gáis chief executive Gerry Walsh, who was appointed in November 2008 to replace the late Joe Gantly.

Mr Walsh joined Bord Gáis in 1985 and held a number of management positions until 2000. The term of office of the board expires on December 31, 2011.

Cracks began to appear when the issue of who would carry the debts associated with the new terminal came to light.

In April 2008 the divisions on the board regarding the debt issue emerged when Mr Gantly resigned after using his casting vote at a board meeting to accept the debts of €113 million.

In October of that year, Irish American Loretta Brennan-Glucksman also resigned from the board.

This was a blow to the airport body at a time when it was operating in a vacuum without a chief executive following the resignation of Mr Gantly.

Her decision meant the 12-person CAA lost three members in just over a year. Former board member Eoin O Cathain, the managing director of O Cathain Iasc Teo, died in July 2007.

Sources close to the board suggested at the time that Ms Brennan-Glucksman resigned out of frustration over the Government’s handling of the break-up of Aer Rianta and the delay in the CAA securing independence from the DAA.

The delay in appointing a new chairman to the authority could also have played a part.

The two vacancies on the board were eventually filled by Dick Lehane, former chief executive of EMC in Ovens, and Annette McNamara, a former Fianna Fáil councillor and assistant principal of Scoil Mhuire gan Smál, Blarney.

A spokesman from the DAA said the CAA board has two roles.

Under the 2004 State Airports Act, it is the role of the CAA board to prepare for separation, subject to it being financially viable. The CAA board also has to carry out, on behalf of the DAA, “certain functions” that have been delegated to it by the DAA.

It said the board has a number of powers set out in accordance with the act.

“It oversees the budgets, the operation and the development of Cork Airport along with the management of Cork Airport,” he said.

A sub-committee comprising members of the CAA board and the DAA board also meets regularly to review how the functions delegated to the board of the Cork Airport Authority are being discharged, it said.

There is no shouting from the new board that separation has to happen now and it has not been vocal in its plans for Cork Airport.

So much will depend on what happens when the separation issue comes back on the table but until then it’s just a matter of continuing with the six-day a year job.