Airport Staff Back Cost-Cutting Plan

Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) employees have today voted to accept a €40 million cost-reduction programme.

The vote, carried by an almost 70% majority will lead to some 300 redundancies at airports in Dublin, Cork and Shannon.

The programme, which was recommended by union officials, also includes a pay freeze.

In a bid to avoid pay cuts, the plan will also lead to the introduction of a novel Employee Recovery Investment Contribution scheme with staff facing pay reductions of on average 5.5 per cent

The DAA said last July it was facing a €70 million earnings shortfall due to significant falls in passenger traffic and commercial income. The State-owned airport manager also said it expected "minimal passenger growth" up to 2011.

The authority's difficulties have further been compounded by budget flyer Ryainair who recently announced it intends to reduce passenger choice by cutting some services from Dublin Airport.

The DAA said it was "disappointed" at the decision. A spokesman for the DAA said yesterday that Ryanair’s own business environment has contributed to the airline’s decision to withdraw some services from Dublin Airport, while at the same time launching new routes and expanding other destinations.

The spokesman also said that decisions on service withdrawl were not related to passenger charges at Dublin, which "remains one of Europe’s most competitively priced large airports".

Ryanair claimed it was reducing capacity on certain routes and putting up prices because of alleged high charges at Dublin Airport, namely the €10 flight tax imposed by the Government in the last budget. The no-frills flyer has issued a number of statements complaining about the €10 tax and the DAA's charges.

However yesterday, Ryanair’s chief financial officer Howard Millar gave a completely different reason for the decline saying it was due to the recession.

Mr Millar said yesterday: "Ryanair’s public position does not stand up to scrutiny. If, as it claims, charges at Dublin Airport are one of the key reasons that it is reducing capacity, why do those same charges not have any impact on the company’s desire to offer additional flights to sun destinations from Dublin this year?"

He added: "It seems odd that an airline that regularly charges passengers €10 each for the privilege of paying for a return flight by credit card should argue that this change will cause a seismic shift in travel patterns."

Mr Millar said that Ryanair’s own charges have soared in recent years including the company's baggage check-in charge which he said had increased by 600% since 2006. The DAA chief also pointed out that the charge for using a credit card to book a Ryanair flight has almost trebled since 2006 and that the cost of changing a Ryanair flight booking had almost doubled during the same period.

(DW/BMcc)