Originally Posted by
The Flying Cokeman
Cyrano, Airnoc etc,
While giving out about Irish taxpayers money going to PSO routes because of EU. Let's not forget how much money that has been pumped into Ireland by EU for various projects and infrastructure the last many years and still coming.
A good example is those 2400 workers from Dell who got laid off recently in Shannon- they have just today received a total of 14.8 mio Euros in order to help them finding a new job. It is not always a bad thing being a member of the EU.........
Flying Cokeman, you seem to have not so much got the wrong end of the stick as the wrong end of a completely different stick!
I am not "giving out" about the EU. On the contrary, I am simply making the point (correcting a previous poster's assertion to the contrary) that the PSOs are funded from domestic budgets, not from EU funds.
Nor am I suggesting that it's "because of the EU" that the Irish taxpayer is funding PSOs. National governments decide they want to impose PSOs and they then have to follow an EU-imposed tendering process, as they would for any big public procurement project. Whatever about the pros and cons of the government decision, it seems sensible to me that the procurement process be as transparent as possible.
(Do I think that the GWY-DUB PSO route should be cut? Yes, absolutely, I think that whatever the merits of a PSO on this route in the past, the greatly improved road and rail infrastructure has by now removed the justification for subsidising the air link. But that's nothing to do with the EU, but rather a domestic Irish political decision.)
And of course the country has benefitted massively from EU money over the years - Dell this week is a trivial example compared to the level of structural and cohesion funds which Ireland has received. How
on earth can you make out that I suggest it's a bad thing being a member of the EU?
