Derry ratepayers bore ‘unfair’ airport burden and that’s why DfE is taking over: Murphy

Derry Journal

Transcript

00:00In terms of Derry Airport then, again just to touch on, since your announcement in October,

00:06we now have 130, more than 130 flights per month going out of Derry, with two new routes

00:12to Edinburgh and Liverpool, we have the extension of an existing route to Birmingham, so again

00:16really positive in that space.

00:20How do you intend and how can your department work to continue that sustainability and actually

00:27to continue that growth trajectory which we've seen so far?

00:31Well, the difficulty we had was, and this became more evident during COVID when we were

00:36trying to find ways to support the airports at the close down, so as an island, airports

00:42are critical to us, and we have three significant commercial ones here, and we were trying to

00:49find a way to support them and we found that infrastructure responsibility for some parts

00:53of it, economy responsibility for parts of it, finance responsibility, so it was kind

00:59of a bit of a mix mash, so what we want to do is, from our perspective, and we have agreement

01:05with other departments and agencies, the airports are a very significant economic contributor,

01:10because they do that connectivity off the island to Britain and then to internationally

01:15to the north and south as well, so we want to ensure that we have a policy which supports

01:20the development of airports and recognises the economic contribution that they make,

01:24and that's why we moved to try and take the policy in relation to airports and aviation

01:30into the Department of Economy, because we had I think at least two, maybe three different

01:35departments all having some input, and that's just a mess when you're trying to deal with

01:39issues in relation to that.

01:40So part of that responsibility then is taking responsibility for a city and area airport,

01:46and one of the economic instabilities they had, they were consistently reliant on ratepayers

01:51in Derry, City and Strabane to pay that contribution into the airport.

01:55The airport serves more than Derry, City and Strabane, it serves Causeway, Coast and Glens,

02:00Council it serves, arguably beware it's from Malinoma, it serves Donegal as well, so it

02:05was an unfair burden on ratepayers in Derry, plus it didn't lend itself to the stability

02:10that you want in terms of investment in the airport and making sure that it continues

02:14to grow more routes and become a stronger part of an economic hub in the North West,

02:19and that's a catalyst and a vitally important part of the economic growth opportunity in

02:24the North West is to have a functioning airport there, and not one which is constantly a threat

02:29hanging over whether will it survive next year, will it survive the year after that,

02:32and has it a long term future.

02:34So in that regard we undertook to take that responsibility, that's a challenge because

02:38we've been through all of the challenges that we have in the department, but we undertook

02:42as part of that regional balance approach, as part of trying to grow the economy in a

02:45regionally balanced way, then this is a very important asset in the North West which makes

02:50a contribution to that.

02:51So we have undertaken to find the money to support that going forward.

02:55We obviously are working on business cases, working with the Department of Infrastructure

03:00to try and sort out the barriers for how we do that, but in terms of the policy approach

03:06we are taking airports as much as we possibly can in relation to responsibility.

03:12There are some responsibilities that are obviously reserved in Britain in relation

03:15to aviation as well, but taking that responsibility into ourselves and trying to find the finances

03:21to support Derry Airport.

03:22We've committed to doing that, so that's what we'll do in time ahead.

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