Airport abandoned in two-tier society

JUST as those people who live where public transport, decent broadband, a bank, a reassuring Garda presence, post offices, health services, and even schools are so easily accessible that they are taken for granted are bored by their country cousins’ constant complaints about the closure of what are, in 2015, basic social services, those people living in a hollowed-out, downgraded rural Ireland find the dismissive response from those lucky people insensitive, indifferent, and increasingly unacceptable.

The sustainability of rural Ireland and all of its communities — towns and cities too — is in question and the primary factors in this to-hell-or-Connacht decline are unemployment, and the inevitable emigration that follows, and the withdrawal of essential public services by Government.

In another chilling illustration of what can only be described as the distasteful contempt with which these issues are regarded, Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe, when answering questions in the Dáil on the crisis facing Cork Airport, continued in the vein adopted by Dublin ever since the last government did a shameless, treacherous U-turn on a commitment made by the late Seamus Brennan of Fianna Fáil, the then transport minister, over the airport’s debt burden and independence. Mr Donohoe said nothing that would indicate a change of heart. Indeed, quiet the contrary, he said, basically, Cork Airport was on its own.