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
THE Executive Chairman of the Shannon Airport Authority (SAA), Pat Shanahan, has confirmed that €150 million will be spent on capi- tal investment at the airport over the next 10 years.
Mr Shanahan also confirmed that Shannon was on course to make a profit this year and that the Marsh Point Bar — closed last year as part of cutbacks at the airport — 1s to re-open
in the next number of weeks.
Mr Shanahan last Friday briefed airport employees on the future di- rection of Shannon following the 1m- plementation of the “survival plan”’.
Mr Shanahan said, “Morale among staff is positive. We have got to a very significant change in Shannon so there is going to be a period of time where people are unsure of their environment. Practically every job in the airport has changed so there will be a settling-in period.
“But after two years of discussion and negotiations, people were more than relieved that we have actually come to a conclusion, particularly the employees remaining in Shan- non. We are quite anxious to move on and turn Shannon into a vibrant international airport and get to a lev- el of exceeding the customer services Where Shannon was always deemed to be a friendly face.”
With traffic levels at currently 3.6 million, Mr Shanahan said that the SAA had ambitions to breach the five million mark in the next number of years.
“We don’t want to be overly opti- mistic either, we want to be realistic about what we can achieve. We are optimistic that we can achieve the figure of five million in a sensible time period,” he said.
“We are currently growing at 10 per cent per annum and 1 the vari- ous markets continue to expand, then we will get close to it very soon. It is a very cyclical industry so it is very difficult to predict what might hap- jeer
Mr Shanahan said that there were no immediate plans to lodge a busi- ness plan for the airport to Govern- ment. He said, “Our focus has been on implementing and making sure we have our cost base right.
He said, “We hope that we would have a very clear picture of the vi- ability of the airport at the back end of this year.”