Brendan O’Regan transformed not just the aviation world but the Irish economy when he opened up the world’s first duty free shop to Shannon Airport in 1947. Designed to serve transatlantic passengers refueling in Shannon due to fuel limitations of early aircraft, the concept of allowing passengers in transit to simply buy goods free of local taxes positioned Shannon as a global stopover hub.
Two decades later the growth of Shannon set the stage for Tony Ryan and Guinness Peat Aviation to train up a coterie of Irish professionals to establish the various shell companies that make up the gargantuan aircraft leasing industry today AerCap, SMBC, and Avolon.
A combination of first-mover advantage, favourable tax conditions, IDA support and Ireland’s geographical role in transatlantic airfare made the Republic the aircraft leasing superpower that it is today. By current estimates Ireland accounts for over 60% of the world’s leased aircraft fleet amounting to circa $100 billion.
In an era of crippling mass migration this strategic and commercial hold can be utilised to partially solve our demographic woes with the same foresight of Tony Ryan and Brendan O’Reagan and better idea such an idea is easily marketable to the political centre.
Irish lessors lease planes to hundreds of airlines globally, many of which operate on key irregular migration routes. With surprisingly little regulatory and legislative effort the Irish state could condition lease renewals or terms of mandatory cooperation with national deportation and migration control policies (e.g. verifying documents, refusing boarding to inadmissible passengers, or accepting charter returns).
The idea of fines for airlines carriers bringing in migrants has already been broached before the past two years but such an idea takes the concept five steps further. Despite its puny size Ireland has a commercial hold over the airlines of nations such as Nigeria or Pakistan through delayed leasing renewals for non-compliance and other bureaucratic tools.
On the European front Ireland could facilitate Frontex or national returns by leasing aircraft directly for charter deportation flights, especially for group returns. Rather than relying only on political diplomacy or development aid (increasingly revolving around granting visas to the third world), Ireland could propose an aviation-finance-based model for incentivising returns.
Currently the global aircraft leasing regulatory framework is codified in the Cape Town Agreement with Ireland more than able to push for deportation clauses within aviation norms. Aircraft leasing provides a politically clean, non-confrontational tool to influence migration upstream largely before arrival.
Such a push is not without its pitfalls with airlines more than capable of shifting operations to Singapore or the Gulf should the practise get too politicised.
Regardless, such a move is the exact type of technocratic policy that will ultimately solve the migration influx of the 2020s with the added advantage of granting Ireland diplomatic leverage on the European and pan-European stage.
Migration reform should not just be reactionary but necessary in 21st century Ireland.
Migration reform is pointless without a functioning returns system. Today, fewer than 20% of rejected asylum seekers in Ireland and the EU more widely are actually returned. The gap between decision and enforcement is now the biggest driver of system failure. Ireland should help bridge this gap by enabling aircraft availability, conditioning airline cooperation, and proposing innovative tools that complement legal rights with operational capability.
Just as Ireland turned a sleepy regional airport into the launchpad for a $75 billion global industry with the invention of duty-free, we now have the opportunity to turn our dominance in aircraft leasing into a tool for European migration control. The world copied our off-duty idea. Now it’s time we lead again not just in commerce, but in the geopolitics of remigration,
Though they help Ireland as an island doesn’t need border fences to influence migration it holds the keys to the very aircraft that carry the world. Leasing can become a tool not just for profit, but for statecraft: legally and strategically advancing return policy in a rules-based framework.
Ireland should not aspire to become Europe’s border guard. But it can become a systems engineer helping improve how Europe manages lawful migration. Aircraft leasing is just one piece of that system but it’s a uniquely Irish one, and its potential is still dormant.
How to deport those who arrive without I D ?
Jimbo’s deportation flights have hit the skids because he plucked the low hanging fruit , the remainder are in the clouds .
E U has mostly given up on returns ; the best the Brits can do is return 5 % of asylum applicants to France ( in return for accepting a similar # unwanted by the Gauls ) .
We are stuck with uninvited guests from every corner of the globe . Expect numbers to rise annually forever . Visas & work permits will continue to be given out like confetti .
Shortage of aircraft isn’t a problem . I D less migrants are impossible to deal with . Is Claude from Cameroon , one of the two Congo’s or somewhere else in the Sub Sahara ? Who knows ?
Thinking Outside The Box Burkean
Thank you for this article, the Duty Free Inspiration at Shannon also has links to the launch
of The Irish Coffee, created by barstaff for the freezing Yanks who chased a hot bevvy on
arrival.
Agreed we need a deportation stratagy inclusive of visa/pps and migration freeze without
depending on any grubment interference or dilly dàil dallyance to IRISH REPLANTATION.
We are now at a CRITICAL CRISIS, the rhetoric has been ramped up significantly as the
FAR LEFT NEO LIBERAL LABELING has progressed us from far right to NAZI UK LOYALISTS
because we have the gall and audacity to challange UN-controlled UN-vetted Illegal/Legal
Migration across the Open Continent Of EU and the dire dramatic effect its produced in terms
of IRISH SECURITY AND SAFETY with the explosion of foreign national criminality and statistics thats increasingly UN-controlled for decades.
Anti-migration sentiment in Ireland is now attracting a unified globalist assault by players that are desperately trying to link it to and combine it with anti- US/EU/USRAEL/HATESPEAK/IRISH AMERICAN and NORTH SOUTH DIVISION OF IRELAND.
So dumpty de trumpty can have HIS great america again
So von de hun can have HER never ever europe again
So UN de WEF can have THEIR globalist reset
So ZION de vil can have THE chosen one
SO DUMB AND DUMBER CAN HAVE NO IRISH HOME LAND OR FUTURE…FU.K YOU TOO.