O’Leary to explain reduction in Kerry-Dublin route

RYANAIR chief Michael O’Leary is due in Kerry today and is expected to spell out the reasons for his airline’s major reduction in services on the Kerry to Dublin route.

A media briefing is planned for Tralee and Mr O’Leary will be also asked why Ryanair decided to pull out of its Public Service Obligation (PSO) contract with the Department of Transport to provide a subsidised service on the route.

He may also meet members of Kerry County Council, which has already discussed the issue at a special meeting.

The number of daily return flights is to be reduced from three to one. That flight will operate on a commercial basis. Efforts are under way to get Aer Arann, which had held a PSO contract for the route, to take up the vacant slots.

Kerry TDs John O’Donoghue and Jimmy Deenihan yesterday met Mr O’Leary at Dublin Airport.

Later, in Leinster House, along with Kerry Airport board chairman Denis Cregan and the airport’s financial controller Basil Sheerin, they met Aer Arann boss Pádraig O Céidigh.

Kerry Airport management, meanwhile, is seeking a meeting with Transport Minister Noel Dempsey to discuss the future of the PSO service on the Kerry-Dublin route. The existing PSO contract, worth just over €5 million, is to expire next July.

Ryanair and Mr Dempsey are locked in a bitter war of words, accusing each other of breaching the contact.

Politicians in the county have united with the aim of maintaining a full service on the route and ensuring the future of the PSO contract.

The route and the PSO are seen as essential to ensure the future viability of Kerry Airport where passenger numbers dropped last year by 11% to 372,000.

Meanwhile, Shannon Airport director, Martin Moroney, said yesterday it is “substantially loss-making” and is in a fight for survival.

Addressing members of the Midwest Regional Authority in Ennis, Mr Moroney also confirmed the airport is taking legal action against Ryanair for “failing miserably” to reach targets in its deal with the airport.

Mr Moroney told the members that the airport “is substantially loss-making and there is no future for the airport if that remains the same. We have to put in place a profitable airport that is viable and has sustainable growth in traffic”.

“Shannon is not in terminal decline,” he insisted, adding that “talk of grass growing and tumbleweed on the runway is ridiculous and is very damaging”.

Mr Moroney was standing in for chairman Brian O’Connell following his late withdrawal, due to illness.

Mr Moroney said that in their deal with Ryanair, it was contractually bound to deliver two million passengers in year five. “After the introduction of the Government €10 tax, they reduced the target from 2m to 1.2m. They had no legal right to do that and we are taking legal action against them for breach of contract.”