Examination of Witnesses (Questions 144
- 159)
TUESDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2004
MR KIERAN
O'BRIEN AND
MR GEORGE
JOHNSTON
Q144 Chairman: Good morning to you,
gentlemen. On my list I have got a list of three potential witnesses
and I can see Mr Johnston and Mr O'Brien are here. Originally
I had Mr Brian McLaughlin on my list.
Mr O'Brien: He is unable to attend
this morning.
Q145 Chairman: Thank you. You are
very welcome. Previously you have heard how the Committee conducts
its business. We have set about 30 minutes for this session. Also
you will have heard the evidence that has been given and we have
tried to keep abreast of the issues ourselves following them in
some of the local newspapers, so the Committee does not come to
the issue without some knowledge. We do appreciate you taking
the time to talk us through the concerns that you have got. I
wonder if I could ask a general scene setting question in as much
as in the evidence that you presented to us in written form you
informed us that your group is made up of people opposed to the
proposal to extend the runway but also is part of a wider group
of people in the wider council area concerned at the airport's
annual cost to the ratepayer. There were two issues in there,
the issue related to expansion and then the issue related to cost
to the ratepayer. Could you give us some breakdown in terms of
the number of people involved in terms of those who are in the
group, those you are representing, so we have got an idea. This
is not a question to trick you and say "that is a very small
number, is it not", or whatever, it is to try to help the
Committee to understand how many people are affected, how many
people are in the group and what the balance is in terms of the
campaign to either stop the evictions or because of the wider
issues related to the ratepayer and the cost of the airport.
Mr O'Brien: Firstly, the group
is opposed to the westward extension of City of Derry Airport,
not opposed to the extension full stop. The group has proposed
what they see to be the best solution if the airport requires
expansion, which is to build a new runway. The council had the
option of a westward extension, an eastward extension towards
Lough Foyle or a new runway slightly pivoted to the north away
from where we are sitting now. We are opposed to the westward
extension which will affect the homes. We believe around 21 properties
would have to be purchased by Derry City Council to complete that
westward extension. We do not speak for all of those people as
there would be a few within that group willing to sell their property.
Outside of the immediate proposed boundary there would be somewhere
in the region of about 30 other homes whose owners would consider
themselves to be blighted, both their home and family life blighted
by the proposal to extend the runway there. Within Eglinton Village
and surrounding areas there are a number of people who would be
concerned about the increased air traffic and noise and pollution
that would be associated with that. In the wider City Council
area, ratepayers, there are people who, while sympathetic to the
cause of people who may lose their homes, are more concerned about
the financial burden to the ratepayer of the continuing cost of
having the airport. Originally when we had the first meeting of
the people in homes immediately around the area when this news
first broke there were about 40 homes represented. We then called
two public meetings. There was a meeting in Eglinton in the village
hall last November which was full to overflowing and we estimated
something in the region of 400 people attended that. There was
no dissenting voice, no-one speaking in support of the airport
extension at that time. At a further meeting in Derry City, that
was more representative of people concerned about the extra cost
to the ratepayer.
Q146 Chairman: There was a suggestion
in one of the newspapers, and I have tried to find it, that there
were 17 rather than 21 and the numbers still opposed were very
small, and I think it mentioned three. Of the 17, it was suggested
in one of the articles that there were only three homes that were
still opposed.
Mr O'Brien: Unfortunately, that
has been the line of propaganda used by Derry City Council. This
weekend, in anticipation that that line of propaganda would come
forward here, we managed to get signed signatures, which I can
make available, of 13 property owners who fully support the presence
of this group and their efforts to stop the westward extension
of the airport. Unfortunately, we do not like to be using those
figures broken down as to who is for and who is against in the
way that some of the people connected to Derry City Council have
done, we see this as a divide and conquer tactic being used as
a type of intimidation. Some people have even described it as
psychological warfare by Derry City Council against its own citizens.
Q147 Chairman: I appreciate how difficult
it is for a group without resource, but have you been able to
carry out any general surveys in terms of what people's feelings
are towards this issue?
Mr Johnston: The only way we have
been able to gauge it is there have been two public meetings,
one in Eglinton and one in the city, and there is another system
for considering people's opinions known as the citizen's jury
and we had a citizen's jury on this where you have people speaking
on a jury deciding which is the strength of the case. At none
of those meetings did anybody suggest that they were anything
other than in favour of the Doneybrewer residents, although, as
Kieran said at the beginning, a lot of that within the city is
a sympathetic vote because the main concern in the city is the
£1.5 million a year subsidy which, if the proposed plan goes
ahead, will increase and it is admitted within the Summary Report
from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is the document on which we
rely and on the council's website, that if the proposed expansion
takes place, whichever direction it goes, whether they choose
to miss the Doneybrewer houses or not, that will increase to £2
million or £2.5 million running costs a year. That is the
concern within the city and certainly the concern of a lot of
people in Eglinton itself even though they are sympathetic to
the Doneybrewer Road people. What they see in Eglinton is a milch
cow for rates with very little public service provided within
the now vastly expanded village of Eglinton from what it was when
we came here 25 years ago. They are very angry about the fact
that the third highest element in the rates goes to subsidising
what they see as a failing airport.
Q148 Mr Campbell: Chairman, that
answer from Mr Johnston leads me on to my question. The Civil
Aviation Authority has supplied figures to the Committee which
would indicate that the throughput to the airport has increased
from an admittedly low base about 10 years ago year on year by
about 20% and the figures for the current year appear to indicate
something of that order for 2004, although obviously we are only
in November. Does your group accept that there has been an increase
of that magnitude at the airport?
Mr Johnston: We do not, because
if that was the case Derry City Council would be proclaiming it
from the rooftops. The figure of 20% that appears in the CAA evidence
is based on the three summer months of last year. The growth in
2003 was 217,000 passenger movements from 204,000, a 6% increase.
It is on Derry City Council's website. That is the annual increase.
The 20% figure is based on the holiday traffic. In terms of growth,
the 6% figure appears in the PricewaterhouseCoopers' Executive
Summary. I do not know where this figure is coming from. I also
know that if you went to the CAA website at the beginning of this
year you would discover that their figures did not say 217,000,
they said 203,000 passenger movements. The CAA said that and in
their figures year on year they said that was a 0% growth rate.
That is the CAA's figure.
Q149 Mr Campbell: The figures that
the Committee have got would appear to indicate something of the
order of 20% year on year from 1993-2003. Do you dispute those
figures?
Mr Johnston: Absolutely.
Mr O'Brien: I disputed those figures
with the CAA in February of this year and on two occasions have
written to the CAA to ask them to clarify those figures but, as
yet, the CAA have admitted that they are unable to clarify the
difference between their website and Derry City Council's website.
Q150 Mr Campbell: Like Stephen Pound's,
this may be an unfair question but I have to ask it anyway. Would
you have any suggestion about to whom we should go in order to
get more verifiable figures? If we are getting figures from the
CAA that you think are incorrect, who do you think we should go
to to get the correct figures?
Mr Johnston: Go to Derry City
Council's website. They are posting a 6.2% increase, from 204,000
to 217,000. I would imagine if it showed anything like a 20% increase
they would be blasting it from the rooftops.
Q151 Mr Campbell: Forget about the
figures for the last 12 or 18 months, do you accept that 10 years
ago there was nothing like 200,000 passenger movements?
Mr Johnston: Absolutely.
Q152 Chairman: If it helps the Committee,
in our evidence from the CAA, which I think will be published,
that 20% increase is the average annual growth between the years
1993-2003. Just for clarity, in 1993 there were 31,000 passengers
and in 2003 there were 206,000 passengers. The 20% is a 10 year
growth from 31,000 to 206,000. To give you a flavour in terms
of more recent figures, the 15% that you quoted for this year,
Mr Campbell, is also confirmed and is made up of increases in
all three categories: domestic, international scheduled and international
chartered. That may be the best way of looking at those figures
in terms of looking at the CAA's figures. I do take the point
that you may want to question the CAA as to how they arrived at
those figures.
Mr Johnston: There are a lot of
questions we would have about the figures. We have to rely on
the PricewaterhouseCoopers' report. The figures that are presented
there, on which this expansion plan is based, answer some of the
questions that you were asking earlier. The viability of this
proposed expansion, whichever direction it takes, in the PricewaterhouseCoopers'
report is passenger movements of 829,000 by 2010. 619,000 of those
would be shifted by Ryanair, 330,000 of them to Stansted, 103,000
each to Hahn, Charleroi and Paris. The figures are all in there.
One of the concerns that I would represent within this group is
the dismay that I feel about the way that this airport has been
developed. None of the estimates but all of the expansion plans
that have taken place since the European Regional Development
Fund back in 1991, 1992 and 1993 have ever been met. The figure
of 211,000 to make it viable should have been reached by 2000
but it was not reached until 2003.
Q153 Mr Campbell: I think I am in
for more competition here from the aircraft. Given the figures
of your group, do you have a corporate outlook or a diversity
of views about the future of the airport, about what should happen
not only to the people in the immediate village area of Eglinton
or even the Londonderry area as a whole but the wider North West?
Do you have a view as to what the future should hold five years
from now for this airport?
Mr O'Brien: This group is saying
two things. Firstly, we are opposed to the westward extension
and we query the reasons given by Derry City Council to arrive
at the decision to have a westward extension. We believe if the
airport is to be as successful as they and others intend, continuing
on a west extension will bring further problems in years to come.
We are saying that if the airport is to be a success then the
proper way forward is to build a new runway pivoted to the north
for the reasons which we have given. We are not aviation experts,
we are a small group with little resources. This is what we are
saying and we were saying that before the decision was taken last
October but we felt that no-one was listening to us. This decision
was taken and we still feel that our views have not been taken
on board. I have to point out that the only documents we have
are the documents that Derry City Council used on, or prior to,
23 October last year, we have not had any information on the workings
of the steering group or on any of the proposals put forward or
any research that has taken place since then. We are not privy
to any of that, we only have the documents prior to October last
year.
Q154 Mr Hepburn: My question has
more or less been answered but, simply, if Ryanair fails to expand,
which obviously would have a big impact on this place, what do
you think the likely traffic through the airport will be in the
future?
Mr Johnston: That is a very difficult
question. Again, we have to work from the Executive Summary from
PricewaterhouseCoopers and they concluded in paragraph 21: "However,
there are a number of uncertainties associated with the project.
. . Ryanair is the current main low cost operator at the airport
and no commitment has been given by Ryanair to expand their existing
service or introduce additional routes". It goes on to say
various things: "It is possible that an alternative operator
could operate on these routes although similar infrastructure
requirements may arise. However, at this stage there is no evidence
to suggest how likely this is". All of the consultants' reports
carry that health warning, if you want to call it that, about
the potential free footedness of low cost airlines. All of the
reports, going right back to the ERDF that gave us the facilities
that we have now, carry the warning that there is no way the consultants
can account for potential competitors' movements as a consequence
of, say, City of Derry having a bigger share of the Northern Ireland
market, which struck me as being very relevant to the thing that
you are talking about. In a way, what expansion of this airport
requires is very careful consideration because, there is no doubt,
were they to increase their share from eight to 10 to 12 to 15%
of the air market here, given that the catchment area here is
366,000, that is the up-to-date figure given in the Executive
Summary, and you want 829,000 passenger movements by 2010, the
only way you will get that is by driving into the traffic from
Belfast City Airport or Belfast International. If you do that
in any serious way, given that they are bigger organisations,
given that they are profitable organisations, what they will do
is price you out of the market in a savage way and they will close
the airport.
Q155 Mark Tami: If the Government
went ahead and provided public funding, what options would be
left to you as a group?
Mr Johnston: You mean what would
happen if—
Q156 Mark Tami: If the public funding
was available for the extension?
Mr Johnston: Before Kieran answers,
because his family home is involved in that, the difficulty we
have at the minute is not knowing precisely what has been proposed
by anybody. The original notion was 25 million, or thereabouts,
which did not include the cost of the purchase of properties.
That was to extend it westward down Doneybrewer Road. We now understand
that is not going to be available but what is required is extra
money, smaller sums, to increase the safety of the airport. If
that is true, that is grand, but it raises another question. The
last major project here, which was in 1998-99, was to improve
the safety of the airport, a contract which started out at 2.7
million but ended up at 3.59 million, a 60% overspend, and now
they say they have to do this for the sake of safety. What I imagine
is whatever money is made available for this supposed safety thing
or for the expansion of the runway further down Doneybrewer Road,
there will be very determined resistance there and very long court
cases, serious, serious delays involved in that. Kieran can speak
for himself, he lives there.
Mr O'Brien: I think George has
summed it up. Also there is the issue of planning, there is no
planning approval for that. To give you an idea, from what we
gather from the DoE road service, part of the Doneybrewer Road
closed for the 1999 extension and full approval for that has not
yet been finalised after all this time. I imagine there would
be protracted deliberations about any further closures and planning
applications that will go ahead with any movement to the west
at all.
Q157 Mr Bailey: In your submission
you mention the argument by the council in support of this proposal
and it refers to "the peripheral location of the North West".
Rather than developing Derry Airport you seem to be suggesting
that the area should look to Belfast International Airport. Do
you think this is a view generally shared in this area?
Mr O'Brien: There are other factors
which were mentioned earlier, such as the road and rail infrastructure,
which are lacking in this area. By upgrading those, that will
make the airports in Belfast much more accessible from this region.
Bear in mind we are less than 60 miles from the major international
airport anyhow, I am not sure what people class as being accessible.
Is 60 miles classified as not being accessible to an airport?
The Civil Aviation Authority evidence to yourselves last week
seemed to bear out something of what we have said. When asked
about City of Derry Airport, one of their statements was City
of Derry would always be constrained by the population around
it and the presence nearby of a larger airport. I think that would
bear out something of that. There is also the factor that there
will always be more choice of destinations and times from a larger
airport than from a smaller regional airport, so there will always
be that type of draw from there. Also, we heard mention earlier
about charter holiday flights and asking people on the street
do they support that. For a lot of people whose one and only flight
in a year would be their annual holiday, is an extra hour up the
road all that much of an inconvenience, especially if a lot of
infrastructure provided in this airport is for holiday charter
aircraft, and taking people off for a fortnight's holiday to spend
their money in some other country could not be argued in any fashion
to be good for the economy here.
Mr Johnston: Could I just add
to that. In a way, that is a core question. If you were to ask
people that question, as I would, they would say, "We do
not want this airport closed but we cannot see the justification
for this expansion, it will lumber us with even more debt".
The one question is what about the status quo. Yes, we support
that. We do not want to see those jobs disappearing. It has done
its job and it has not held up any of the major developments but,
more importantly, it has not prevented any of the economic disasters
that have happened because of the structure of industry in this
part of the world. Once you say to people, "Are you prepared
to see another 25 million spent on this and, as a consequence
of that, the closure of Doneybrewer Road" they say "No,
all that is going to do is increase the rate subsidy". There
are two questions, support for the airport but great hesitation
over the proposed expansion.
Q158 Mr Bailey: I must admit, following
the different arguments that you have put forward, and I will
try to summarise them, one is that you have advocated a differently
aligned runway which presumably would cater for an expansion,
although I think you said earlier even that would result in further
subsidies from the local rate payers, which is an issue of concern.
Secondly, you have talked about the expansion of Belfast International
with appropriate improvements in the infrastructure, so presumably
that would make Belfast International more competitive. There
does seem to me to be a certain logic in your arguments which
would actually lead to you saying that this airport should close
down, particularly given the rather frail basis on which the existing
route network is underpinned. Do you actually want it closed?
Mr O'Brien: As a group we have
not said that we would or would not.
Q159 Mr Bailey: I am not asking you
what you have said, I am asking do you want it closed?
Mr O'Brien: Are you asking me
personally? I am speaking here for a group of people.
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