If you recently visited the so called International Airport at Aldergrove you could be forgiven for thinking that you were in Karachi. The queues through security are nothing short of scandalous.
And yet the management offers nothing more than a hollow apology. They seem to have more excuses than Jose Mourinho. In August, at the height of summer. they blamed ‘staffing issues’; in October, another statement seemed to suggest that the customers were to blame by not arriving early enough for flights or not packing properly.
Yet customer behaviour hardly differs from airport to airport and others seem to cope.
Aldergrove also is in desperate need of a makeover as it looks both tired and miserable. As a gateway to Northern Ireland I often wonder what foreign visitors must make of one of the most unwelcoming and unattractive entrances anywhere. It’s as if one arrives snuck in by the back door.
The transport network to the airport is also wholly inadequate. But it’s the atmosphere that kills the travel experience. Airports are never pleasant places to stay for a prolonged period but the experience at Aldergrove would test the patience of St Francis. Friendly and customer focused it is not. This writer has found staff to be downright rude - particularly at security.
Contrast the chaotic scenes at Aldergrove with the ease and speed with which one can move through George Best City Airport. Aldergrove is my airport of last resort. Dublin and Belfast City are preferred options. Both are better served by infrastructure and are an all round better experience .
And that’s the point, Northern Ireland’s infrastructure is underwhelming. Even if Aldergrove got its act together it would still be let down by the poor roads infrastructure that leads to it.
Despite the crowing, the self congratulatory press releases and the mutual stroking, ten years of Sinn Féin/DUP administration failed to deliver anything meaningful on infrastructure. It’s a record of abysmal failure and before their supporters start criticising the administration of the UUP and SDLP, that was nearly twenty years ago. As they say in football, you are only as good as your last game. And the DUP and Sinn Féin have ten seasons behind them.
Unionist politicians love bashing Dublin but they lack the gravitas to accept that southern Ireland is an economic success. Northern Ireland requires subvention of over £10billion and has an overinflated public sector. This subvention is heralded as being a major benefit of the Union but the scale of it is not so well known amongst the wider British public.
In reality, Northern Ireland budgets have been decimated and there isn’t any scope to do anything innovative or creative with what we get. Don’t believe me? Ask anyone who works in education or the health service.
When the English taxpayer finally realises that Northern Ireland isn’t good value for money, we are going to be the the little boy Santa Claus forgot. Britain currently pays less to Europe than Northern Ireland in order to access world markets. Here they get sweet FA and a torrent of abuse.
Despite the gurning, following the collapse of financial institutions and world recession, the Republic of Ireland’s long term investment strategy of bolstering infrastructure, education and foreign direct investment (FDI) paid off. Last week the Irish government announced a surplus.
Our big innovation was the Glider. Bendy buses remodelled to look like the Luas. These Gliders take fewer passengers than the double deckers they replaced. The great crusade to push drivers off the road has been an abject failure. Public transport - unless you live in Belfast, is infrequent, inconvenient and expensive.
The countries in the much pilloried EU have had exceptional and cheap public transport for generations. In Northern Ireland the deep thinkers gave us 24 hour bus lanes with no 24 hour buses to run in them, train time tables that suit the staff not the customers and rail networks that can’t link Dublin and Belfast in an hour and half.
Northern Ireland’s successive administrations have literally wasted hundreds of millions on inter communal containment and appeasement. It was frivolous and irresponsible. Northern Ireland needed good infrastructure. It needs connectivity within Northern Ireland and with the Republic of Ireland. Fanciful, hair-brained bridges to Scotland are just that.
Brexit could be the final nail in the economic coffin of Northern Ireland. The place is simply not equipped to trade and export globally without access to the infrastructure of the Republic of Ireland. Time to get out the Rosary beads.
