The Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, has conceded that his plan to break up Aer Rianta is being resisted by the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy.
While insisting yesterday that the "entire Cabinet" supported the policy of breaking up the State airports monopoly, Mr Brennan said he was "battling" the Department of Finance over the financial aspects of the plan.
Mr Brennan also said that Mr McCreevy was backing the Department of Finance, which is said to be strongly opposed to aspects of the break-up model Mr Brennan wants to introduce. "He supports the Department normally in these matters," said Mr Brennan of Mr McCreevy.
The admission of Cabinet divisions over Aer Rianta follows the failure of Ministers at their meeting last Tuesday to agree legislation to break up the company.
Mr Brennan's officials had booked Seanad time in advance of the meeting to initiate the passage of the legislation.
While the delay in finalising the legislation was widely seen as a manoeuvre to avoid political pressure against the policy in the run-up to the elections on June 11th, Mr Brennan disclosed yesterday that a "fair few" issues were still outstanding.
As Mr Brennan insisted he was still on course to deliver the legislation in July, Labour claimed the initiative was floundering.
The Labour leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said the Minister had "totally underestimated" the complexity of the break-up policy. "Almost a year after Minister Brennan first announced the plan, he has still to provide a single business or commercial justification for his proposal."
In addition, Ryanair published an advert, which appears today in The Irish Times in which the company criticises the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, for the Government's failure to deliver the break-up and a second terminal at Dublin Airport. "A lot done??? You must be joking Bertie!!!" it says.
When asked if he feared that Mr McCreevy would cancel the break-up policy altogether, Mr Brennan said: "My issues with the Department of Finance are more technical issues to do with how we finalise the legislation going forward."
He identified several financial issues that had emerged as he sought to "battle out" the debate with the Department of Finance.
"Because it is a plc there are revenue reserve issues, there are distribution of assets issues, there are ownership issues of assets. There are a fair few complicated financial transaction issues which the Department of Finance and I are battling out between us but Government policy is to give full autonomy to the airports," he said.
"Government policy is to give [the airports] autonomy, that's supported by the entire Cabinet. That was decided on last July and confirmed again last October."
The Tánaiste, Ms Harney, insisted on RTÉ's The Week in Politics last night that the Government will proceed with the plan. "We have to approach this matter in an can-do, will-do frame of mind, rather than we can't, we shouldn't," she said. Refusing to comment on Mr McCreevy's position, she said: "There are a lot of technical issues. There are a lot of company law issues. There's a lot of resentment as there always is to change."
