We have failed our children before. We cannot afford to do it again

YOU may have seen the recent news coverage about the Government’s decision to create a new future for Shannon Airport.

They have decided to separate Shannon Airport from the Dublin Airport Authority and bring it together with Shannon Development to form a new entity with a commercial mandate in public ownership — and in the interests, they say, of the future development of the Shannon area.

Shannon Airport, of course, has a problem. It has very considerable debts, around €100m. At the moment, those debts are part of the balance sheet of the Dublin Airport Authority, but it’s clear that if they are transferred to the new entity, there is every possibility that this new beginning for the Shannon region could be strangled at birth.