Until the 1960s, Ireland’s aviation capacity consisted of three airports in the Republic, at Dublin, Cork and Shannon, operated by the State-owned Aer Rianta, and one in Northern Ireland, at Aldergrove near Belfast, as well as a State-owned airline in the Republic, Aer Lingus.

Almost all European scheduled airlines at the time, including British Airways, were State-owned.

The decades since have seen a proliferation of airports across Ireland, not all of them successful, and the exit of the State from airline ownership.

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Both Aer Lingus and British Airways now belong to the listed International Airlines Group (IAG) which also owns Iberia and Vueling, while the legacy of the late Tony Ryan includes more than Ryanair, the airline which bears his name and is now one of Europe’s largest.

It also includes a thriving aircraft leasing industry largely built here by the alumni of Ryan’s aircraft leasing venture, Guinness Peat Aviation, which passed to the American company GE Capital when a stock market flotation flopped in the early 1990s. Both Ryanair and Aer Lingus are solid and successful companies, likewise the aircraft leasing firms.

The Irish State’s involvement in the aviation industry is nowadays confined to the airports sector – it does not own any airline or leasing companies.

The regulation of airline competition is overseen by the European Commission and member states have a more limited role in matters including air traffic control.

The leasing sector appears to prosper without subsidy on a diet of no more than encouragement from the Government.

But airports policy has been hugely expansionary.

There were, at peak, 12 airports on the island of Ireland, nine in the Republic and three in Northern Ireland, versus just four in the 1960s.

All three in Northern Ireland remain open for business but only six of the nine in the Republic still have commercial flights.

Both Galway and Sligo have closed while Waterford remains open but without scheduled service since 2016.

As the various regional airports were built the governments north and south also modernised the interurban road system and the predictable result has been the concentration of traffic at the main airports, especially Dublin. With high car ownership and better roads, the island of Ireland is a lot smaller than it used to be.

It makes sense to build a new regional airport if revenue is sufficient to cover operating outlay and to remunerate the construction capital costs.

Exceptions for social policy reasons may include offshore islands and remote locations, for example in northern Scandinavia, but this consideration does not arise in a small country, particularly one with an improved road system.

Costs vary, so the minimum number of passengers required to pay the bills is difficult to determine, but several million passengers per annum may be needed to guarantee commercial viability.

There are no examples around Europe which can even meet operating costs below one million passengers a year, never mind the remuneration of capital.

It is believed that both Cork, where around 3.5 million passengers were served last year, and Shannon (2.3 million), are losing several million a year on operations, but no figures are publicly available. One is entitled to wonder why.

There is currently a capital programme of €200m at Cork Airport, owned by the State via the Dublin Airport Authority.

Its annual operating losses are not disclosed since they are aggregated by DAA with the profits at Dublin.

At Shannon, the airport is part of a group which includes the Bunratty entertainment business and the rent-roll of the former Shannon Free Airport Development Company, and no breakdown is published.

Outside Dublin, which will handle roughly 36 million in 2026, these are the two busiest airports in the Republic.

Aldergrove in Belfast, privately owned, will expect about seven million, and is the second busiest airport on the island. None of the other regional airports reaches even one million passengers per annum.

The Irish Government, in addition to funding the capital costs of these facilities, has also been offering route subsidies to airline operators.

There is a controversy about one beneficiary, the airport at Carrickfinn in Co Donegal, located in the north west of the county and well removed from the main centre of population at Letterkenny.

The latest iteration of the route subsidy would see no reduction in the number of departures (two daily) but what locals see as less convenient flight times for cancer patients attending Dublin hospitals, sufficient to propel them to Dáil Éireann last week to lobby TDs. Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill suggested they consider the services available at Letterkenny Hospital, less than an hour away, where oncology services are being upgraded.

Carrickfinn attracts only 50,000 passengers per annum: there must be hundreds of bus stops around the country which do more business.