This article is from page 20 of the 2010-01-19 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 20 JPG
AS SHANNON Development pre- pares to publish its end of year re- port, it 1s being speculated that the development agency may have to sell some of its property.
The Department of Tourism said no to an application for extra funding from the Mid-West Task Force.
The alternative for the regional de- velopment agency – which is also the regional tourism authority – may well now be to sell some of its property.
Good management of the property portfolio which it holds has in the past allowed Shannon Development to be largely self-financing.
But the recession has seen a down- turn in the number of occupied prop- erties and a subsequent drop in rental income for the development agency.
The loss of the majority of activity on the Dell site means also the loss of the largest tenant in the Raheen estate, which is managed by Shan- non Development.
The same circumstance has put further pressure on Shannon Devel- opment to provide initiatives which might lead to replacement jobs.
Dr Vincent Cunnane was appoint- ed to the leadership of the Mid-West Task Force last year and the report which it produced for the tanaiste
recommends increased development of tourism across the Shannon region as one of the key moves in promoting regional recovery.
The report recommended _ that Shannon Development should get an extra €5 million for the next three years from the department to “fur- ther tourism development and inno- e1n (Oy 0 lee
It also recommended that the mar- keting budget of the development agency should be directly funded by the department. Neither recom- mendations has been acted on in the department’s tourism budget, firing speculation that Shannon Develop- ment will have to dig into their own resources.
The amount which Shannon Devel- opment will receive in subvention fro the department will remain the same as it was in 2009, €832,000.
Meanwhile, efforts are continuing to have the €3 million fund for Shan- non Airport taken out of the hands of Tourism Ireland and put into the cof- fers of more local tourism control.
It had been expected that the mon- ey would be allocated to Shannon control to promote traffic and routes at Shannon in 2010 but it remained under the control of Tourism Ireland, despite lobbying by regional tourism stakeholders.