New airport authorities for Shannon, Cork and Dublin will be set up on a statutory basis in the first half of next year, the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, promised yesterday.
Mr Brennan was speaking after naming eight new directors of the designate board for Shannon Airport.
Four worker directors, he hopes, will fill four remaining positions later.
A spokesman for Mr Brennan said the Minister had envisaged a smaller sized board, but he wanted to include all the high-calibre people who came forward and, consequently, he was now expanding membership to 12.
The Minister has written to several trade unions asking them to nominate the four worker directors, but they appeared to back away from that idea last night.
Mr Mick Halpenny of SIPTU said the unions were still waiting to hear from Mr Brennan about a fresh round of talks under an independent chairman. He said the ICTU general secretary, Mr David Begg, had written to Mr Brennan about this last week but no response was forthcoming.
"Talks under an independent chairman are very important to us. There is a ballot for industrial action there. So we will have to see what happens. But we are more interested in those developments right now than anything else," he said.
The eight new board members are: chairman Mr Patrick Shanahan, who is chief executive of the Atlantic Technology Corridor, an industry-led alliance representing 272 technology companies; Mr Patrick Blaney, a former chief executive at aviation firm GPA; Ms Rose Hynes, an aviation lawyer; Mr Tadhg Kearney, chairman of the Air Transport Users' Council; Mr Michael B. Lynch, managing director of the Lynch Hotel Group; Mr Padraic Burke, a corporate finance expert; Mr Reg Freake, a senior executive at Dell; and Ms Olivia Loughnane, a director of the Shannon Free Area Development Company.
However, the Labour Party spokeswoman on transport, Ms Róisín Shorthall, questioned the way Mr Brennan was proceeding.
She said he was preoccupied with publicity and announcements "at the expense of serious and defensible air transport policies".
"There has been no case made, commercial or economic, by the Minister for his proposed course of action, to establish three State agencies in the place of one, which today he says is to be abolished; and transferring all of the group debts to Dublin Airport," she said.
"There are many critical issues posed by the Minister's announcement that he intends to abolish Aer Rianta, not least the status of the large Aer Rianta Eurobond issue (circa €250 million), which is traded internationally and in which many overseas investors have invested. Is this bond issue now or in prospect of default with the Minister's announcement that he proposes to have Aer Rianta abolished by mid-2004?"
"What issues arise from the point of view of EU law, including competition law, in respect of the apparent decision to leave Cork and Shannon debt- free, while proposing to encumber Dublin with all of the debts and liabilities of Aer Rianta," she asked.
