2026-02-12

In all my time in politics I probably only ever saw the anger of the Donegal people as acute as I have seen it in recent days and that was with regard to the handling of defective blocks in the county. There is probably a thread that runs through this. The Minister who refused to come to our county and meet homeowners with defective blocks was the Minister for housing at the time, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, who is now the Minister for Transport who signed the contract that ended the midday flights from Donegal to Dublin for the next four years, affecting cancer patients across the county. People travelled to Dublin yesterday and told their testimony. They explained that they would not be here today if it were not for those midday flights. They literally would not have been able to get to Dublin in time to have life-saving treatment. The Government was told time and again in the lead up to this the importance of these flights. It has entered into a contract with the airline which will end these flights. I struggle to find words in parliamentary language to explain the frustration, anger and hurt of the people of Donegal in terms of what has happened. It is best shown in terms of what has happened over the last number of days when we found out by accident that the Government had actually entered into this contract, which it has known about since October last year and which meant that the afternoon flights from Dublin and Donegal would end. When we heard this, people from across the county, from community groups, sporting organisations and State bodies to musicians and actors, pulled together and explained that this is unworkable. They are demanding that Donegal be no longer the forgotten country and that we hold on to what we have. The best example of that has been Majella O'Donnell, Daniel O'Donnell's partner, who spoke on "The Late Late Show" about the importance of these flights. The Minister of State and his Government have done a dirty deed. The Government has seriously betrayed the people of Donegal. The contract was executed just 24 hours before the Government knew of a delegation representing 500 cancer patients who currently use the flight and 15,000 people who signed a petition in a matter of days. That is exactly how people feel. They feel hurt and betrayed. However, we also need to feel a bit of hope that this life-saving service can be restored. We need a Government that is working not against the people of Donegal but with them and with the group, the advocates and the cancer flights and services group that travelled up here. One of its members is back in Dublin today after being up here in a deputation yesterday. This person is accompanying a cancer patient in a hospital here in Dublin who is getting life-saving treatment. The consultant, a very senior person in that hospital, had a conversation with a patient today in which he said he saw this issue on the news yesterday and that if it goes ahead, it will be unworkable, and he had no problem being quoted on that. Everybody knows that what the Government has entered into is unworkable. It is not fair to the people of Donegal, tourism, businesses, commuters and it is a disaster for people who rely on this service. Between 10% and 15% of the 44,000 passengers are healthcare passengers. This has to be reversed. I ask the Minister to spell out clearly whether the Government will finally stand on the right side of this and stand with the community campaigning to get this decision overturned.

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.

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.

Deputy Pat the Cope Gallagher and I, along with Deputy Doherty and all the other Oireachtas Members from the county, are at one on this in terms of trying to find a way forward and make sure there are flight times in place that suit and meet the needs of the people of our county. Deputy Doherty will see from the response how this evolved. We both heard at yesterday's meeting that the tender that was issued was the same as the previous tender. There was no change but what came in as a result of that tender was different. As the response I outlined shows, there was only one applicant for the tender and it met the minimum specifications of the tender. As outlined, the reason the Department signed the contract was to ensure there would not be a discontinuation of flights from the county and a service would continue to be in place. The Department did that following legal advice. From a Government point of view, there is very significant funding for the public service obligation, and rightly so. We fund and have a wonderful airport in Carrickfinn but we have to make sure the flights available best serve the public and connectivity from Donegal to Dublin, given all of the other challenges we have. The objective now, which we all discussed yesterday when we met with the Secretary General, is to find ways to have the afternoon flight restored and have the issue of the aeroplane overnighting in Carrickfinn considered and addressed. The Department is working within a legal framework. There was no change in the tender that went out this time compared with the tender that went out the previous time. What changed was the response. There was only one response to the tender, it met the minimum requirements and there were legal obligations around that. We now have to work collectively to make sure the investment we are making in terms of spending taxpayers' money on this service, and rightly so, best meets the needs of the people we represent. The Minister is committed to meeting with the cancer group next week and to meeting and continuing to engage with all of us to find a way forward here.