Waterford Airport.

Knock and kerry are boreens..Waterford is a regional city with a catchment of 600,000 including south tipperary which was at a stroke if a pen removed from the SE population figures

Talk about look over there from the propaganda arm of government ..timing couldn't be more obvious

https://www.rte.ie/news/munster/2025/0506/1511233-waterford-quays/

what social protection wastes has there been?

…and we re off! seriously lads! a significant amount of welfare spending actually goes towards elder care and pensions!

…oh and if you think we re gonna maintain some sort of functioning economic momentum with an aging population, you ve another thing coming! i.e. this is where immigrants come into it, i.e. we need them, or we re fcuked!

yes and no, we simply dont have enough young people here to build what we need, including major infrastructure such as airports, airport extensions, and all other infrastructure needed for such, including housing!

That's a simple question to answer. None of those areas have the door to door motorway/dual carriageway access to Dublin Airport that Waterford has. Less than 2 hours and a motorway/dual carriageway the whole way.

The M9 killed the demand/need for an airport in Waterford. The same as the M6 did for Galway. Waterford in fact is even closer to Dublin Airport than Galway is. Galway airport at least had the sense to shut the doors and call it a day.

Sweet lord why are we still talking about emerald and Logan, that has been discussed to death.

With the exception of Donegal to dublin (PSO flight) emerald are operating all aet lingus regional flights from jet capable runways.

Logan are very new to the Irish market, they operator Donegal to Glasgow, and I think they operator Dublin, no where else in the republic.

Emerald are servicing the aer lingus regional contract, and do not have the aircraft to expand operations independently.

The likes of Logan is risky, UK based operator, anything goes wrong in either country/economy and they are gone, we have seen this with manx, Flybe, stobart, vlm, even local airlines, euro Celtic, Aer Arann, they all went bust, based on that emerald I would suspect would be very careful, continue with aer lingus at low risk.

The above airlines show that turbo prop airline business is risky, Waterford have openly stated this, and said they would prefer to proceed with a runway extension rather than have a service for sometime time and be back in the same position as always.

It's not sustainable, this is why the only operational airports in the county are all jet capable airports with the exception of Donegal which services a PSO route.

Yet you post great news for Knock! In an ideal world Galway should have been developed not Knock.

I don't know how you can possibly assert that Waterford is well served already in terms of road and rail connections.

The only decent road connection is the M9 to Dublin. The N25 and N24 are both totally inadequate.

The only direct rail connection (with a dogleg to Kilkenny) is to Dublin. Limerick can take from just over two and a half hours to almost five hours. Waterford to Cork can take from three hours eighteen minutes to almost seven hours.

Calling that well served is totally disingenuous. Unless you are travelling to Dublin, rail is not a realistic option. The N25 and N24 need significant upgrading as does transport infrastruture for the entire south east.

The need for investment is shared with the other regions. Unless you are travelling to or from Dublin infrastructure is largely inadequate.

what has the comer brothers money gone into?

so it hasn’t been used ?

They're an operator that has shown over decades that they're willing to try routes in to Ireland and see if they work; and their entire fleet can use the existing runway, so they're very valid to talk about here.

Eastern have also tried multiple routes in to Ireland before with a similar fleet; but have nothing now. Bit less off a history of doing it; and my experience of them in the UK is that they can be painfully expensive!

they have probably only proposed to pony up the money, on the back of government investment, i.e. they probably havent actually put any money down yet, but might if government investments go ahead, again, as others have stated, theyre primarily asset speculators, they have little or no interest in truly developing the airport, only extracting as much from their speculations(rent seekers), i.e. actors to be highly wary off!

more or less, as others have said, they dont truly care if the airport extension actually occurs or not, as they would very likely gain either way, dont be surprised if they already own property and land in the region, as theyre involvement thus far has already benefited them, by helping to inflate the price of those assets, even with the current state of nothing happening.

such 'investors' are also trying to de-risk their investments by outsourcing the risks else where, in this case towards the state, hence why its very unlikely theyd pony up all money required to get the works done, outsourcing that to the state, so if such a development failed, theyd walk away scot free, and with a sh1te load more money than invested, so win win for them, but the state, i.e. us, would get shafted

but what happens when asset speculation is a fundamental part of government policy, and is actively encouraged and facilitated?

…and the fact theres also a fully functioning rail link directly to dublin airport, some people have some nerve!