Cork Airport needs to fly on its own

The Minister for Transport, Mr Leo Varadakar, says memorably, that “There aren’t enough passengers using Cork to pay down the airport debt.”

Well, the minister should note that one of the reasons why there are not enough passengers is that there aren’t any flights.

A cursory glance at the flight schedules for today (Friday) shows that there are exactly two scheduled flights from Cork arriving in mainland Europe in the morning and one of these is to Lisbon, which is hardly a mainstream business location. Scandalously, there is no air connection to Dublin which would enable prospective Cork customers to avail of the many morning flights to Europe that leave from there.

Cork needs to break away and create its own deals to entice airlines back. Otherwise it will remain forever in the stranglehold of the DAA and remain another painful example of a blinkered and foolish austerity drive that will hamper any future growth in the area.

Donal O’Dowd

Forest

Ridge Cork