Cabinet meeting to discuss privatised terminal in Dublin a waste of time. Privatising it won’t work!

If privatised terminals don’t work in Toronto, couldn’t work in Heathrow, then, why would anyone think they’d work in Dublin, asks Spudnik.

The Cabinet is meeting yet again to discuss a second terminal at Dublin Airport. The big question isn’t whether it’s needed or not - it is and we all knew that a decade ago - but whether to privatise it or not .

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary wants it privatised - more money for him see. The minority partners in the coalition government, the Progressive Democrats (PDs), want it privatised. But then they want everything from trolley beds in hospitals to driving tests privatised and will sing that from the rooftops to anyone who’ll listen.

Their larger partner in government, Fianna Fail, the supposedly dominant partner, won’t say what it wants. It never does until the last minute. But despite the controversy the whole debate has caused, no one in government seems to have questioned whether privatising terminals in airports works.

They only had to look at Toronto’s Lester B Pearson Airport to find their answer. It doesn’t.

At Toronto the average per passenger airside charges at the privately-run terminal three are twice as high as those at the State-run terminals one and two.

Staff productivity was down by 34 per cent in 2004 compared with the 1998 figure. Also down was aircraft handling efficiency and passenger handling efficiency. Non-airline revenue is down by 36 per cent. For the same period, staff costs per passenger show an 88 per cent increase, and the operations and maintenance costs per passenger have soared upward by 140 per cent.

In the UK they looked at privatised terminals for Heathrow. The low cost airlines similar to O’Leary’s Ryanair said: "NO! Bad idea mate. Move on."

Well no they didn’t. They said this: "Competition between different terminals can only be truly effective when there is unused terminal capacity available, and when there is every likelihood that additional capacity can be made available when demand warrants."

None of the above applies at Dublin Airport.

Neither the Progressive (lets privatise everything we can) Democrats, nor Michael (Money, Money, Money) O’Leary have produced any evidence to show privatising the terminal at Dublin would be beneficial to consumers.

Privatising for privatising’s sake doesn’t work. Especially for the consumer.