Senator Gerard Craughwell - speech from 1 Oct 2020

Minister, I want to welcome you to the House. It is a great honour to have a fellow Galwegian here and I am sure Galway is very proud of your elevation to a ministerial post. We are very lucky to have somebody of your talent take on the job. Minister, Covid-19 has devastated the international air industry, I suppose, but what it has also done is it has opened up some of the grave errors that have been made in recent time with respect to transportation policy, etc. I remember sitting in this chamber when we were talking about the selling off of Aer Lingus and my colleague at the time, Senator Sean Barrett, was devastated that we would sell off the national airline. It is even more devastating that our two national airlines, Ryanair and Aer Lingus, have come into this crisis cash rich and are going to leave this crisis cash poor. And that is going to impact airline transport and connectivity from this country for eons to come. The other gaping hole in transportation policy and policy around the ports is the lack of local representation on the boards of these airports and indeed harbours. The lack of local representation, the people who are on the ground who know what is happening, who are able to, if you want, look at the needs of local communities and things like that. We have deputies and senators in this house talking about those needs when we should have county councils debating those needs and working on them. But these things are opening up as this crisis goes on. Another issue here, you mentioned it in your speech, how ungetted we are to the pilots and aircrew who flew to China to bring back PPE to this country. And I am extremely grateful to them and very proud of the work that they did. However, the downside of that is that our defence force, one of the few defence forces in Europe, has no heavy lift air capacity. And that is a crime, that our air force would be left without that. We contract out air ambulance services. Well, maybe we should look at all of that right now and see how we can use what resources we have within the country to overcome the issues that are there. The aviation supports that we are talking about are on two sides, really. Because we have got to maintain the airline companies that I have been speaking about. We also have to maintain the air leasing capacity that this country has built a phenomenal international reputation for. But as a former trade union leader, my heart has to be with the workers on the ground who have seen their income slashed. And who have seen no prospect of getting back to any kind of work in the near future. And that's something that, it's no different than any other workers that have been laid off in the hospitality industry. But some of these people were paid massive sums of money as pilots and things like that. And suddenly they're finding themselves on 300 quid a week or whatever. So, the airline sector is suffering desperately and the workers in the airline sector are suffering even more. And I actually welcome what Senator Dooley suggested there about offering alternative employment that would be commensurate with the COVID crisis that we're going through in areas like contact tracing and things like that. Maybe there's something we can look at there. Maintaining routes, Minister, even if it means sending an empty aircraft once a week to some of the routes that we're not now servicing. Maybe that's something we should do. But I would ask that maybe we look outside the box. And I was speaking to my colleague, Senator Byrne, about opening a route directly from Ross Lair, from Cork and from Waterford to the heart of Europe. Maybe, while we're waiting for that to happen, there's an opportunity to replicate what happened in Berlin in the 1960s and have a direct airlift into Europe. Maybe we could utilise aircraft that are sitting on the ground to support import and export, to build new routes for import and export, which do not include the United Kingdom. Because, clearly, we were going to have difficulties going through that. So, when we're talking about strategic connectivity, there is an opportunity there to fly directly into the heart of Europe for import and export. And I think, rather than have an aircraft on the ground, that's something we should be looking at. The recovery task force, I wish them well, but we're dealing with an open-ended crisis here. Nobody knows when it's going to end, but I do acknowledge, Minister, that what you are doing is putting in place a team that will be up to speed, ready to grab any opportunity that becomes available and get the airline industry up and running as quickly as you can. And I very much appreciate your commitment to what you're doing here, so I do. I agree with Senator Dooley. International travel, we've all seen the social media. Why didn't we lock down Ireland? Why didn't we close all the ports? Why didn't we do this and why didn't we do that? At the end of the day, we cannot afford to lock down this country. We have to have some sort of connectivity with the rest of the world. And what we have to do is we have to do it in the safest possible way. I would like to see us improve the testing at airports. I was rather shocked. I was talking to somebody the other day who arrived back from Greece, and as they came through the airport, they were given some advice with respect to isolation, but nobody has contacted them since they came back to find out, were they okay? Did one of them have a high temperature or anything like that? So I think we've got a bit of work to do on that side. We also need to have rapid testing on site, and there are tests now coming online for COVID that we need to examine and see can we get into those tests and see can we use them. The tourism industry, the more I see of what's happening and the impact the airline industry is having on this. I mean, I had huge respect for what was going on in Cork in particular. Cork Airport were dynamic in everything they were driving. And I am not from Cork and have no geographical interest other than it was part of this island. But to see the work that was being put in that being crashed into the ground now as a result of COVID. Shannon Airport, for many years we've been listening to the work being done in Shannon. And again, COVID has set them back maybe 10 years, who knows? So it's about supporting them, about coming in behind them, about putting all of the resources that are required. But I really want to see aircraft in the air. And I think there's an opportunity to look at the import-export thing, get people that are in the airline industry back to work, get them paid decent salaries. And it's something I'd ask you to look at, and perhaps you might discuss it with your Cabinet colleagues and see is there a way that we can start to look at those routes. Because one of the problems with the land bridge, if Brexit goes wrong, is getting perishable goods into the heart of Europe in a short space of time. And as we're delivering stuff over there, I'm sure other stuff can come back. We import flowers from Holland, for example, various other things. And while it might be an expensive way to do things at the moment, at least it would keep the people that are employed in the industry, particularly pilots who have to keep... Senator, I'll let you know you have one minute left. Thank you very much. Pilots who need to keep their air hours up, their flying hours up, it would be important to keep them in the air. But so too the service staff, the maintenance staff, the airport staff, all of those things. So I'm asking you to go back to your department, go back to the Cabinet, and maybe let's look outside the box a bit and see how we can get more aircraft in the air and get more people flying. Laskar Heerlick, thank you very much for your time. Minister, once again, thank you. And Galway, I'm sure, is very proud to have you sitting there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.