Air Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-12
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Pearse Doherty (SF), Donegal

The Minister of State talked about the airport. Staff at Donegal Airport are ripping about this. They are actually taking legal advice. They told the Department not to enter into the contract. We told the Department not to enter into the contract. I put it to the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach. The Minister of State said the Minister for Transport is listening. The Minister just gave a slap in the face to the people of Donegal. He entered into a contract. It is there in black and white. I have a copy and it refers to "the Minister for Transport and the airline". He entered into that contract without even speaking to the representative group which organises and supports the cancer flights from Donegal to Dublin. That is how much respect the Minister of State's colleague gave to the people of Donegal, the Minister of State and anyone else who tried to be in his ear.
At the end of the day, this is a Government decision and the Government knew about this since October. The Minister of State talked about risk. There is no risk any more for us because the midday flights are gone. The risk has materialised. People who I know and, I am sure, the Minister of State knows are telling him today that the reason they are able to still put their children to bed is that those flights were not a convenience for them but a lifeline, and the Government signed them away. What has happened is appalling and I still have not heard the steps the Government needs to take to do that. There is a way to fix this. It should never have come to this.
Donegal Airport did not even know about it and found out about it by chance just a couple of weeks ago. The Government knew about this for months. When the airline said it was getting rid of the afternoon flights, the Department should have said, in October, it was going back out to tender and would stipulate that afternoon flights be provided. Nobody should be in this situation, but we now need to clean up the mess. I am raising this today, as I did with the Taoiseach and Tánaiste last week, because we are not going to let this go until these flights are restored.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:56+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-12