This article is from page 10 of the 2008-02-12 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
THE Mayor of Clare, Patricia McCa- rthy, has criticised air traffic control- lers at Shannon Airport for taking further unofficial industrial action at the weekend. Operations there were brought to a standstill for three hours on Saturday night, hours before it was confirmed that 99 per cent of the country’s 300 controllers had voted to take official action.
Controllers at Shannon, employ- ees of the Irish Aviation Authority, refused to volunteer for overtime against the advice of their union. All flights in and out of the airport were either cancelled or delayed for three hours on Saturday resulting in 12 flights being affected.
Wednesday night’s action when staff refused to work overtime to fill a two hour gap in the roster affected 11 flights.
Councillor McCarthy asked why Shannon was targeted twice in less than a week when Dublin was only affected on one occasion, on January 25, for about 45 minutes.
“I have to ask what is really going on here. This is the second time in a few days that Shannon Airport was closed because of this dispute while Dublin Airport only suffered for a mere 45 minutes. Shannon has been out of service twice for a total of
five hours with disruption caused to flights and passengers. This is a dis- grace and flies in the face of union advice,’ the mayor said.
Air traffic control staff are in dis- pute with the authority on the issues of overtime and recruitment. They have previously indicated to the [AA that demands on staff to work over- time are unsustainable.
‘“T am very surprised that this can be allowed to happen at a time when Shannon is recovering from bad news and every effort is being made by everyone at the airport and in the business and tourism industry to pro- mote an develop the airport,’ an an- ery Councillor McCarthy said.
IMPACT has confirmed that the ac- tion took place despite advice from the union to “work whatever overtime is required” while talks between the union and the Irish Aviation Author- ity were ongoing.
‘Our advice to members has been to work whatever overtime is required to facilitate the ongoing talks,’ the spokesman said.
Ryanair has accused ‘Taoiseach Bertie Ahern of failing to put in place contingency plans to prevent passengers “being hijacked by wild- cat” strikes.
Both sides are due to return to LRC for further talks on February 19. The nature of the action is to be decided.