In March 2008, the European Union and United States will implement an “open skies” agreement, allowing EU carriers to fly from any EU city to any US city, and vice versa. The current restricted market will give way to greater competition and lower prices. One absurd practice that will be whisked away is the requirement that flights from Dublin to the US have to stop at Shannon Airport on the West Coast of Ireland. Consumers don’t want to stop at Shannon, but are forced to spend an hour and a half waiting around in Shannon Airport for no apparent reason except that there are people being employed at Shannon Airport. Thankfully, this time-wasting job creation scheme is to be phased out.

But trade unions and some politicians are furious that the forced Shannon stopover is to be removed, accusing the Irish government of “selling out” Shannon. According to yesterday’s Irish Independent, Madeline Taylor-Quinn, a councilor for centre-right political party Fine Gael (a European People’s Party affiliate) complained that: “In the negotiations, the Government should have availed of a special provision for Shannon on the basis of regional development. It didn’t.”

Meanwhile, Senator Timmy Dooley of the republican Fianna Fail party (affiliated to the Union for Europe of the Nations in the European Parliament) complained that Shannon might lose 50pc of its transatlantic traffic and that the Irish government should “put in place a funded marketing strategy to support the airport”. SIGNAL, Shannon-Ireland’s Gateway New Action Lobby, which has been fighting open skies for seventeen years, is putting out the begging bowl and demanding the Irish Government provides 53m Euros in compensation.

Vested interests never like the removal of protection, but the open skies agreement will be good for Ireland’s economy, boosting Ireland’s tourism industry and saving the time of Irish businesspeople doing deals in the US.