State-subsidised airline services between Dublin and small regional airports are not giving value-for-money and should be sharply overhauled, the Government has been told.
DKM Consultants found that the Aer Arann-supplied services carried 260,000 passengers annually, but have cost the Exchequer €22 million since 1995.
Furthermore, the routes receive the same subsidy as Bus Éireann gets, even though it carried 46 million passengers last year, the consultants told the Department of Transport.
The services connect Sligo, Donegal, Knock, Kerry, Galway and Derry with Dublin, though regional services operating from Shannon and Cork are not included.
The Galway route costs €5.1 million, Kerry costs €4.5 million, Knock costs €3.2 million, while the other routes receive less than €2.5 million from the Department of Transport.
Each Kerry/Dublin and Galway/Dublin return trip costs the State €100, while each passenger travelling between Donegal, Sligo, Derry and Dublin costs €200. The subsidy reaches its highest on the Knock route, where each return journey costs the taxpayer €560 - though this is down to the route's low traffic. The subsidies' abolition would close some airports, the report acknowledges, but Knock would be able to survive because it has developed other routes.
The existing three-year contract increases costs, since airlines are reluctant to market routes properly if they fear others could win future services.
The Government should consider offering cheaper tickets to, for example, less well-off people travelling to Dublin for medical treatment, rather than subsidising every passenger.
The Kerry/Galway route might "require very little subsidy, or none at all" if a larger jet was used - though this would mean just one flight a day.
Better roads between Galway and Shannon will threaten Galway Airport's future, argued DKM, because Shannon is "the natural commercial airport for the Limerick-Clare-Galway region".
The subsidised flights produce 63 per cent of the income of Sligo Airport, while they also account for 80 per cent of all of the passengers going through Donegal.
Mr Liam Scollan, Knock International Airport's chief executive, said Aer Arann's Knock service carried 11,000 annually because of technical problems, poor punctuality, low frequency and inadequate marketing.
"In all its other routes Knock grew by 25 per cent in 2003 and is set to grow by 60 per cent this year," said Mr Scollan, who complained that business travellers could not do business in either Mayo or Dublin and return home in the same day.
