The government is to establish a cabinet sub-committee to examine the issue of the future ownership of Aer Lingus. The decision was announced following the regular weekly cabinet meeting.
The committee is to be comprised of the Taoiseach, Tanaiste, Minister for Finance, Minister for Transport and Minister for Tourism. It is understood that the first meeting will take place next week and that the committee will report back to government as soon as possible.
A statement from Transport Minister Seamus Brennan said that the management team at the airline have been asked not to engage in any further activity regarding their request to be allowed pursue a buyout proposal until the committee has reported.
It is now understood that the management team's proposal is for a 100% management buy out, whilst retaining and possibly increasing the employee share option trust which is currently set to become just under 15%, pending negotiations with unions.
However, the ICTU has come out against the MBO proposals, saying that the proposal required the employees to sacrifice another 1,300 jobs in order to make a few people in senior management wealthy.
Industry sources have confirmed that Aer Lingus chief executive Willie Walsh has already been offered the top job at Swissair and at some other major airlines, but has so far stuck with the national airline.
Separately Aer Lingus is in the middle of drawing up a business plan for the next few years which foresees an expansion of its north American routes using a low cost model approach. Further cost cuts as part of this plan could see up to 900 redundancies at the airline.
