Taoiseach readies himself for take-off
IT was looking terminal — DAA terminal 2 that is — for Brian Cowen’s premiership yesterday as he opened the Celtic Tiger era’s final piece of infrastructure with an acceptance the country was about to enter a multi-billion euro IMF “support programme”.
The Taoiseach ended days, possibly years of denial of the real state of the economy, provoking one international financial commentator to declare Ireland had began its “12-step programme to return to financial health”.
For a doleful Mr Cowen the prognosis was less hopeful as he travelled up the escalator to officiate at the terminal’s opening, while opponents demanded he immediately proceed to the political departure lounge.
There to welcome him on level 1 was Ryanair boss Michel O’Leary, resplendent in moustache (“it’s a charity thing”), mourning suit and carrying a red wreath for the €1.2 billion tourism industry. He declared the terminal “a big bankrupt fucking property development” and a fitting tombstone for the Fianna Fáil administration, as well as nearly as big a “white elephant” as the “man coming to open it”.
Wearing a pained smile, Fianna Fáil TD Micheal Kennedy confronted the Ryanair boss, telling him he would be using the facility within a year. Mr O’Leary laughed “there’s another Fianna Fáil politician’s forecast you wouldn’t want to believe”.
Of course Mr Cowen was seeing things differently. At arrivals the Taoiseach riddled his way through a press pack onslaught. Asked twice to directly respond to Labour leader Eamon Gilmore’s call for him to resign he obfuscated.
Looking punch drunk from political blows that would have laid low a less stubborn man, Mr Cowen feebly struck back. He derided Labour for its failure to endorse his bank guarantee, a reluctance that he felt “would have brought a situation where this economy would have been down the tubes at that time,” but perhaps finally accepting it had now gone that way anyway.
To a hand-picked audience of DAA guests, including such luminaries of the Celtic Tiger decade as car salesman Bill Cullen, Mr Cowen broke from his script to issue a rallying call for the Tiger years. “This building and what it represents remains, and much along with it” but the future would “involve us taking some steps back in order we can forge forward again”.
Even from a tittering audience that had consumed its fair share of complimentary early morning champagne and orange juice cocktails the applause was lukewarm.
Mr Cowen himself did not consume the complimentary glass on offer. Clearly the mounting political hangover is more than enough to deal with.
In a building which in the coming years will be the venue for many a tearful emigrant’s departure, it was Mr O’Leary’s word that made the bigger impact.
The remarkable building he declared was Fianna Fáil’s “Taj Mahal”, a mausoleum to public waste and bad governance.
In a last flourish of Celtic Tiger largesse the DAA guests, but strictly not the media, each departed with a small bottle of champagne, chocolates and a plastic paper weight — a memento of times, and perhaps a Taoiseach, past.
- Cost €600 million to construct and get operational.
- The DAA announced in August 2006 it planned to build a new €395m terminal at Dublin Airport capable of handling up to 15m passengers per year.
- Aer Lingus operated the inaugural flight from Manchester as the Taoiseach unveiled the new three-storey facility.
- Construction began in October 2007 and employed up to 2,600 workers on site, with 1,000 new jobs created with the building’s opening.
- T2 will be home to Aer Lingus, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Etihad Airways and US Airways.
- T2 will house a new US pre-clearance facility allowing passengers on US-bound flights to clear all customs, immigration and security checks
- US carriers will transfer when the pre-clearance facility opens in the new year.
- T2 contains almost 40 new shops, food and drink outlets.
