This article is from page 6 of the 2012-07-03 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 6 JPG
THE new committee structure put in place by the Government that has responsibility for implementing Shannon’s independence and the break-up of Shannon Development’s old responsibilities will produce results by the end of the year.
That’s according to Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar, who has rejected that the appointment of 28 different people to three separate government committees was too unwieldy to put concrete plans for the airport in place.
“It’s the nature of everything really that you want to include people and bring them along with you with as much as possible and at the same time you need to keep things tight. You need to strike that balance,” said Minister Varadkar.
“The steering committee is very tight. There are only five or six people. The task forces are all made up of people with particular expertise, or the particular agencies involved,” he added.
The committee structure for the airport was blasted on the first day of the aviation conference on Wednesday when aviation entrepreneur Domhnal Slattery said “committees are a useful forum, but don’t start businesses and are very rarely effective”.
In continuing his broadside against the blueprint for Shannon, chief executive of Avolon aircraft leasing company said the Government “has pretended to do something by putting Shannon into an interregnum, but has only kicked the can down the road, made it someone else’s problem and put off the ultimate decision”.
However, in defending government policy on Shannon, Minister Varadkar has told The Clare People that the roll out of Shannon’s new independent structure will take place in the coming months, ahead of the final deliberations of the two task forces and steering committees that have been given the job of formulating the new airport blueprint.
“The airport is still in decline and this year things haven’t really picked up and what’s important for everyone is to have certainty and to have decisions made and concluded this year,” he said.
“What I’m trying to do is add a sense of urgency to things. We are in a very difficult environment for aviation at the moment, but the job of government is to put in place the environment and the tools to be suc- cessful.
“The timeframe that has been given to the task force is to report to the government with detailed plans by November, but I don’t necessarily think we should wait that long. I would like to see things happen as they can be done and have everything concluded by the end of the year because uncertainty not helpful,” he added.
Minister Vardarkar said he couldn’t “say for certain” when the new Shannon structure will be up and running. “That involves other people and other bodies and potentially primary legislation, but we need a clear roadmap, clear decisions and a clear picture this year and implementation after that.”