The decision by the three top executive in Aer Lingus to resign from next May should not have caused too much surprise to the Government. Once the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, so emphatically rejected a management acquisition of the national airline, these three, serious, intelligent men were going to move on.
With the swift turnaround in the profitability of Aer Lingus, they obviously calculate that they are more highly employable elsewhere now than they would be after a couple of years of political uncertainty about the future direction of the airline.
The failure of the Government to tackle the politically fraught issue of the ownership of Aer Lingus led directly to the decision by the airline's top executives to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Their efforts, along with the sacrifices of the company's employees, over the last three years are the reason why Aer Lingus is now one of Europe's most successful airlines. The beneficiaries of their talents are now likely to be Aer Lingus's competitors in one form or another.
The reluctance of the Government to engage on the issue of Aer Lingus's future can be understood politically, but that does not excuse their failure to act decisively. A report into the strategic options open to Aer Lingus carried out by Goldman Sachs has been with the Government for six weeks, but the Cabinet sub-committee set up to consider it has yet to meet.
While stopping short of recommending the sale of the airline, the report argues that its long-term survival requires access to capital on the same terms as its competitors such as Ryanair. This is probably a long-winded way of saying that it should be floated on the stock market. There is very little about this that is attractive to the Government. The social partners don't want it. Its own back- benchers don't want it, and a significant proportion of the public are worried about private ownership given their experiences at the hands of Ryanair.
The Government cannot ignore such concerns and is unlikely to do so in the run-up to the next general election. But neither can the Government continue to dodge their responsibility. What is Aer Lingus today? A commercial airline pitching for business with low-cost competitors or an airline with a national obligation to carry home coffins for the Irish dead abroad? That is the first question that the Government has to address. Any compromise would not sit comfortably with the increasingly frustrated Mr Walsh and his colleagues, whose management style is characterised by an unabashed commercialism, which at times verges on the macho.