Irish Examiner view: Welcome aboard! Cork gets ready for take-off

Cork Airport reopens after a 10-week closure to facilitate a complete rebuild of its main runway

The main runway at Cork Airport where the finishing touches are being put in place ahead of reopening for flights on Monday at 0200 hours. Picture: Denis Minihane.

It is always cheering news when a project comes in on time, so well done indeed to Cork Airport management and its designers, builders, and engineers for delivering on their promise to reopen next week.

It has been closed for 10 weeks for repairs since mid-September as part of a €40m investment. 

Managing director Niall MacCarthy says it was the fastest large-scale construction project in the country.

Back in October 1961, when then taoiseach Seán Lemass spoke at the official dinner at the Imperial Hotel which marked the opening of Cork Airport, the first services were provided by the national flag carrier Aer Lingus and Cambrian Airways flying to Cardiff and Liverpool; Cambrian was later subsumed into British Airways.

Lemass said the opening of Cork symbolised the national purpose of Ireland which wanted the world to view it as a “modern, progressive State coming rapidly and fully into line with all others with modern equipment and facilities”.

During that first year of operation, Cork Airport served 10,172 passengers. Now, with 20 routes out of the city, Cork is looking to return to its position as the Republic’s second busiest airport and to attracting back the 2.5m travellers who passed through it pre-Covid. 

That figure withered to 530,000 in 2020, with the total forecast to halve again this year.

For optimism and growth to be maintained, it is important that the lack of confidence associated with the prospect of travelling caused by the pandemic is defeated by sensible precautions and taking a cheerful approach to the enhanced, and often tiresome, levels of bureaucracy which now apply to undertaking a trip.

It is dispiriting to learn that thousands of people have failed to appear for booster vaccines, with some centres recording no-show rates between 25% and 50%.

Whether this is because they believe, wrongly, that they are already sufficiently protected by their first two doses (all the evidence suggests that vaccines decline in efficacy over time) or we have simply become complacent, it is nonetheless a dangerous trend.

As of Thursday, 420,119 boosters had been administered.

In England, a country we all like to point the finger at while shaking our heads in disbelief, the comparable figure is 13m. 

They are already working through the 40-49 age cohort while we expect to see more people aged 60-69 inoculated “in the coming weeks”. 

Apart from relieving strain on the health services, all the signs now are that passengers will eventually have to prove that they have had the extra protection when they go abroad, with some countries, including Croatia, Israel, and Austria, already introducing a time limit for the validity of the original injections. 

Failure to take extra measures will incur a quarantine period upon arrival.

Yesterday, England included the record of the third dose in its NHS app, although it is not yet necessary to show evidence of a booster for entry into that country.

Boris Johnson did hint, however, that “life would be easier” for visitors if they were already compliant with this requirement.

Travel access has consistently been used by governments to “encourage” the public to enhance their levels of vaccine protection and, with grim news across Europe, this is unlikely to recede in the next quarter. 

It is important, then, as this vital airport comes back into service, that its customers play their part in recovery by getting ahead of the game.

On October 16, 1961, Seán Lemass said: “We must now push ahead. We must do so with all and every development that will make certain that in the new circumstances which will confront this country in the very early future that we do not carry any deficiency or handicap that it is within our power to remedy.”

He was talking about economic growth, but his comments can equally apply to Ireland’s fightback from Covid-19 and the necessity of our links to the rest of the world.

Cork Airport is a major engine, not only for the south of Ireland, but for the nation as a whole. Let us all make it work.