This article is from page 3 of the 2012-10-23 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 3 JPG
THE loss of the Aer Rianta International to the Dublin Airport Authority is a further nail in the coffin of Shannon International Airport.
That is according to the former Director of ARI, Liam Skelly, who believes that the Shannon-grown business would provide essential financial support to the ailing airport.
He believes it was unfair to hand over the ARI to a profitable Dublin Airport when Shannon is struggling for survival.
“Aer Rianta International was always known as a Shannon operation,” said Mr Skelly.
The former ARI Director said that Shannon Airport had been “fiddled” out of up to € 400 million in the last decade as it did not get its fair share of ARI profits and sale of assets.
Aer Rianta was set up in Shannon at a time when the three main airports in Ireland – Shannon, Cork and Dublin – were run by independent boards.
It began with the first ever dutyfree and a mail-order department. It was through the airport’s association with Aeroflot that the fuel farms were set up during the fuel crisis of the 1970s.
The Shannon-based Aer Rianta then put in a successful bid to open the first duty-free in Russia at Moscow airport, before expanding to airports all over Russia.
In the 1980s, ARI bought the Great Southern Hotel Group and later invested £30 million in Birmingham Airport.
Mr Skelly believers that the sales of those assets – the Great Southern Hotel Group for € 265 million and the Birmingham Airport shares in 2006 for € 325 million – were not divided evenly between the airports and Shannon did not get its much needed share.
Instead, the money went to the DAA, which was managing the three airports.
“That went to build terminal two in Dublin,” he said.
“A lot of stuff that belonged to Shannon went to Dublin and there was no one on the streets protesting. It went to an airport in profit and this airport was abandoned down in the west of Ireland,” he said.
“Sometimes I get really sad that a vibrant airport has fallen into absolutely nothing at the moment,” he said.