Aer Rianta has announced details of a €140m development for Cork Airport. Work on the new project will begin immediately and will include a new terminal building, a multi-storey carpark, additional check-in desks, and baggage handling facilities.
Cork Airport has been expanding rapidly and its existing facilities, which were designed to accommodate 1.1 million passengers per year, have been stretched to deal with the almost two million passengers who used the airport last year.
Aer Rianta has planned to develop the airport for some time, but these plans have been stalled amid uncertainty about the management structure of the airport in the future.
Late last year, the Aer Rianta Chairman Noel Hanlon publicly expressed concern about going ahead with the Cork development plan while this uncertainty continued.
However, in an equally public rebuke, Transport Minister Seamus Brennan announced in October that the project would be going ahead. He said it was not a question of what was good for Aer Rianta, but what was good for Cork.
At that time, Minister Brennan promised that he would announce 'within weeks' details of his plans for the future of Aer Rianta and changes to the management structures of Dublin, Shannon and Cork Airports but so far no announcement has been made.
