This article is from page 16 of the 2007-06-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
A CLAIM by Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary that the redundancy pack- ages negotiated at Shannon were “off the wall” was yesterday criticised by the Executive Chairman of the Shan- non Airport Authority (SAA), Pat Shanahan.
Asked for his reaction to Mr O’Leary’s comments, Mr Shanahan said, “I don’t think that language 1s sensible at all. We are in a semi-state environment and in a voluntary re- dundancy situation, you have got to make it attractive for people to leave a sound secure job… the package was obviously right on the money be- cause of the number of people that
have taken it.”
Mr O’Leary said, “We’re paying people €150,000 to take up redun- dancy voluntarily and the only peo- ple paying for that are going to be ORONO ECE
“We simply can’t afford these kind of semi-state-type pay offs if we are going to develop a thriving low cost airport like Shannon that is going to be a gateway into the west of Ire- land.”
Asked whether Shannon was be- coming too reliant on Ryanair, Mr Shanahan said, “I don’t think so. For our short haul business Ryanair has been hugely successful. They have delivered on all their commitments they’ve made to us, we have been
working hard and the route selection is correct for Shannon.
“Ryanair has brought a strong com- bination of outbound Irish tourism and inbound year round European tourism. The relationship has gone well, but they are not the only game in town. We haven’t given up on Aer Lingus basing an aircraft in Shannon for European routes.
“Ryanair is a significant player and… and I would expect them to put a fifth aircraft into Shannon early next summer.
Mr Shanahan anticipates that Rya- nair will account for 1.7 million pas- sengers out of Shannon this year. He said, “Before we did the deal, Rya- nair was at 300,000.”