*CCO with Ryanair, Jason McGuinness in Shannon Airport
RYANAIR have accused the Irish Government of hindering balanced regional development and Shannon Airport’s continued growth.
Shannon Airport is one of Ryanair’s best performing airports but further growth will be curtailed if alterations are not made to the Regional Airports Programme which dished out close to €8m in funding last month but Shannon didn’t receive a single cent.
Passenger numbers hit a fifteen year high of 2.1m last year at Shannon Airport but the strong bounce comes at a cost in its exclusion from the Regional Airports Programme where funding remains targeted at airports that operate scheduled services and have annual passenger numbers of less than one million.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Chief Commercial Officer with Ryanair, Jason McGuinness said this cap should be increased to three million. “We’ve called on the government to relook at the Regional Airport Programme, that is a programme which enables the government to enable capital investment in Ireland’s regional airports. At the moment once an airport exceeds one million passengers they are not eligible for that funding, EU rules allow you to lift that to three million and we’re telling the government increase that to three million and allow airports like Shannon, Knock and Kerry to grow and Ryanair will grow with them”.
This cap is a block on the potential growth of Shannon Airport, he maintained. “It hinders the Airport here, there are very ambitious plans for growth in Shannon Airport but they need help. I travel a lot and deal with 240 airports across Europe, regional airports need support from local and national government, that is what we’re seeing across Europe which is why the EU has set a limit at three million annual passengers for this funding, this is what we should be doing here in Shannon too. The Government talk about balanced regional development but this is one thing they could do immediately, lift the cap for Shannon for funding and Ryanair will continue to grow in Shannon”.
