Regional airports face closure as funds cut

REGIONAL airports, including Kerry, Galway, Donegal and Knock, face closure under Government plans to stop funding them in its capital spending programme for the next five years.

Under revised plans for the country’s infrastructure, the Government also dropped a number of ambitious transport projects announced with great fanfare in 2005 under the Transport 21 initiative which promised to deliver “world-class transport infrastructure”.

A railway line between Navan and Dublin has been dropped or indefinitely postponed, as has the third phase of the Western rail corridor between Tuam and Claremorris in Galway, which would have connected Limerick and Sligo by rail.