Waterford Airport’s Board took issue with some of the comments from Minister Ryan, following an interview he did with WLR FM on Monday in which he voiced doubts about the business case being put forward for re-opening the airport to commercial flights.
The former Green Party leader told WLR in Waterford that what had been presented to him was not a business case for re-opening the facility, but “an outline document” that “raises a lot of questions as to the viability of the project”.
“There’s been a very significant increase in the ask of the State,” Minister Ryan told WLR. “It was originally a €5 million investment for the State just in the security and safety measures.
“The airport instead is looking for, effectively, a cash injection of €12 million, almost two and a half times that. There are a number of other issues around what would be needed in a business case. There’s very significant land transfers.”
While welcoming Minister Ryan’s comments that he is in favour of developing the airport in principle, the statement from Waterford Airport insisted that its board “has at all times answered any requests from the Department in a timely manner”.
The statement, issued on Tuesday, added: “In addition, a comprehensive document was presented to Minister Lawless on the date of the board representatives meeting with him and his Department officials on October 24.
“This document answered the business case position, passenger numbers, need for increase in funding, and security around land holding and the aviation use of same.
“The board welcomes all discussions with the Government and Department and look forward to any further discussions.”
An artist’s impression of the Waterford airport of the future
Separately, Independent TD Matt Shanahan has called on all of Waterford’s Oireachtas members to get behind the airport’s redevelopment.
“This south east regional airport is home to Search and Rescue helicopter R117 and the Atlantic flight training school and is one of the busiest private flying airports in the country,” said Deputy Shanahan.
“However it has an Achilles heel. Its runway is too short to take passenger jet aircraft such as the Boeing 737 or Airbus 320 – these 190 seater planes are now the backbone of European air travel.
“Waterford airport has a 40-year history. It was the first base from which a fledgling Ryanair commenced operations and it also hosted Aer Arann for a number of years which ran very successful flight connections between the UK and continental Europe.
“In fact the airport has had five turboprop carriers in its history, but in all cases operations at Waterford ultimately ceased, as each of these carriers outside of Ryanair ran into financial difficulty and were ultimately subsumed or liquidated.”
In 2016, with the latest failure of a proposed new turbo prop carrier service at Waterford, the airport company took the commercial decision to seek investment to fund a runway extension to target the excess capacity building in the European aviation sector now dominated by passenger jet aircraft.
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“Despite the intervening challenges the airport consortium has finally arrived at a position where private investment has been secured to deliver a new runway extension and ancillary developments with the help of some government support,” said Deputy Shanahan.
The new investment proposal is supported by contributions from the local authorities in Waterford, Wexford and Kilkenny, of about €3 million. Private investors and €12 million has been secured, and the Government is being asked to contribute €7 million along with the €5 million support already pledged in a previous business case.
“The development of passenger jet traffic at Waterford once operational, is expected to deliver over €850m of economic benefit to the southeast region every year within five years – for comparison the benefits of Kerry Airport nationally are estimated at over €1 billion to the south west annually,” said Deputy Shanahan.
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