Letter to the Editor: Waterford Airport and our dependence on America
Waterford Airport
Dear Editor,
Recently Waterford Airport was gifted an investment of somewhere between €30 and €35 million. The man was not named, instead he operated through the middleman of local William Bolster. We later found out that this benefactor was none other than Mr Kelcy Warren, one of the top 500 richest people on planet earth, with a net worth somewhere around $7 billion.
It might also be worth noting that Warren is a significant donor to Donald Trump.
This is not Warren’s first foray into Irish soil, with him already owning Castletown Cox estate in Kilkenny.
On Monday, April 20, Waterford Regional Airport shareholders voted to liquidate the company, and hand the reigns over to Mr Warren. He now has private control of the airport with promises to develop the runway and surrounding area, so as to accommodate commercial flights by 2027. I say promises because apparently there is no guarantee for a return of private flights.
Now, not everyone is so happy to hand over the airport, with one local asking, "could we look forward to the arrival of Air Force One?"
Is this (connection with America) good for us? America has dragged us into the worst oil crisis ever and is facilitating Israel’s genocide of Palestine and bombardment of Lebanon.
Meanwhile, we are in bed with America, their big tech companies have us by the cajónes. Redhat operates within our county and college, SETU, and their daddy IBM is closing in. We won’t talk too much about Red Hat and IBM’s involvement with Israel.
So, is this good, becoming more dependent on America? We have seen how volatile Trump is with his on-off tariffs, with him threatening 20% global tariffs, then changing his mind, TACO Trump. These tariffs would cripple us, with the US being a key export partner for goods, such as meat and dairy or pharmaceuticals, and now we have handed our darling airport over to them.
Maybe we will see military aircraft move through just like Shannon has, or maybe we won’t see anything, and the people of Waterford will be left colonised again, left to pick up scraps whilst wealthy men prosper.
But ultimately the blame falls on the Irish government, not Warren; he’s just a rich capitalist doing what he does, invest and make money. This didn’t have to happen; we could have had our airport, and it could have been ours. Time and time again they screamed out for help, but our government ignored them, and now it's gone. We didn’t have to all run out of fuel recently, but our government let us. But they don’t care, if they did, they wouldn’t have let military aircraft through Shannon, they would have enacted the Occupied Territories Bill and put real pressure on America and Israel to not drag us all into the dark ages. If they did care, we wouldn’t have over 17,000 homeless whilst they allow private businesses to profit. This has been our government’s legacy, the few profiting from the many.
Angel Walsh,
Waterford.
