Air passengers sent on return trip to 1970s

WITH all our hopes of recognition as a cultural haven this year, why then does Cork airport wear the same drab, shabby, lacklustre garb of something better suited to the 1970s?

On arrival from the UK recently, I wondered how a first-time visitor to our city might respond. First there was the strawberry-scented infusion in the ladies’ toilet, which half masked the underlying acrid whiffs of something else. Then there was the pink-dusted baggage reclaim area with its fishless, waterless ‘fish tank.’

Upstairs in the viewing area - thank goodness for some distraction and an alternative coffee dock - there was what looked like the makings of an art exhibition positioned alongside the flight monitor, reminiscent of technology circa 1968.

No disrespect whatsoever to the artists on show, but this pocket of colour and creativity from the Cork Mental Health Association might have been shown more respect?

Surely the lack of aesthetic employed in hanging this showcase of work was not representative of airport management’s attempt to entice culture vultures to the European Capital of Culture? What could have been the airport’s only imaginative and innovative redeeming feature was sadly lost and vacuous. Is there not a single creative gene left amid management to remedy this forgotten wasteland calling itself an airport?

Sheena O’Byrne

The Moorings

Pope’s Road

Cork