Air Services Dail Éireann — 2026-02-12 ============================================================ Charlie McConalogue (FF), Donegal I thank Deputy Doherty for raising this important matter for our county on the floor of the Dáil. I am glad to be taking it on behalf of the Minister for Transport who has been in London since yesterday meeting Cabinet counterparts in the British Government. I have been authorised to take this Topical Issue on his behalf and a number of other Topical Issues on behalf of a number of other Ministers who are not in the country today. Both Deputy Doherty and I attended the meeting yesterday with the Secretary General in the Department and representatives of the cancer committee from Donegal, who travelled down on a plane yesterday to make their case very strongly to the Government in relation to the importance of this flight and the importance of a schedule that meets the needs of the public in our county. The Government very much recognises the important social and economic role that this service plays and, more broadly, in providing people and businesses in the north west with daily connectivity to Dublin, as well as further international connectivity via Dublin Airport. The Government is fully committed to maintaining connectivity to the north west by continuing to provide an Exchequer-funded public service obligation, PSO, air service on this route, which also supports inward tourism and regional economic development. The current public service obligation air service contract on this route expires on 25 February. To ensure continuity of services beyond this date, the Department of Transport conducted a public procurement process in line with the requirements of the EU regulation. This process formally concluded on 10 February, with the award of a contract to Emerald Airlines. While the new contract continues to provide for a daily return service from Donegal to Dublin, with an early morning departure from Donegal and an evening return from Dublin, two specific changes to the service have been proposed by the service provider under the new contract which have raised concerns for people in our county. The first concern is around the fact that the aircraft will no longer be based in Donegal Airport, as the Deputy knows, and the second is around the changes to the schedule, where the afternoon flight from Donegal has been replaced with an evening service departing from Donegal Airport. As I mentioned, a public procurement process was undertaken and the market responded to that. Only one tender submission was received and this met the minimum requirements set out in the request for tender, which was published by the Department following consultation with Donegal Airport. In the absence of any competition to operate this service, and having taken legal advice, the Department's priority had been to execute the contract in order to safeguard services beyond 25 February. This was vital to ensure that the people, particularly critical care patients, could book flights for travel beyond 25 February as soon as possible. I am sure the House will appreciate that in the absence of any option to extend the current contract, any alternative from the Department's perspective would clearly have imposed a consequent risk to the continuation of this air service route. As Deputy Doherty knows, the Minister has listened to the concerns conveyed to him by all of all Members from the county, including Deputies Pat the Cope Gallagher, Doherty, Mac Lochlainn and Ward and our Senators in the county, and particularly those raised by members of the Donegal Cancer Flights and Services Group who met with the Secretary General yesterday. The Minister is considering what more might be possible to meet the demands of the users of the air service and to facilitate them. The Minister for Transport has also committed to meet with the Donegal Cancer Flights and Services Group and will continue to engage. We know from our meeting yesterday that this was discussed in detail. The objective now has to be to find a way to make sure the flight times that are available meet the needs of the people from our county. We are fortunate to have an exceptionally good airport. It is important that we make sure, through the public service obligation, that it is utilised in a way that provides the best possible service to the people of our county. We all need to work together to find an appropriate way forward now. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-12/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:02+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-12