Aer Lingus
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-22
============================================================

Rose Conway-Walsh (SF), Mayo

I do not think that a hands-off approach is going to work in this case. Aer Lingus announced in July, as the Minister of State rightly said, that 500 jobs would be lost at the airline. That would impact pilots, cabin crew and ground staff. The company said this was due to the €34 million loss reported for the first six months of 2026. Aer Lingus, though, is a very successful company, having recorded operating profits of €282 million last year.
The company is also expected to make an overall profit in 2026. Its parent company, IAG, enjoyed operating profits of over €5 billion in 2025. The workers in Dublin, Cork, Shannon and around the country who have contributed to that success deserve every effort to be made to secure their jobs or to protect their livelihoods. I understand that Aer Lingus is a commercial company, but that cannot be the end of the Government's responsibility. The Tánaiste told me on 16 July that he would ask the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, to come back to me on the Government's engagement with Aer Lingus.

---

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/2026-09-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-22