Aer Rianta, the Irish airport authority, requested governmental assistance in covering the IR£100,000 cost of hosting Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at Shannon Airport in 1989, state papers have shown.
The Department of Foreign Affairs showed hesitance towards the request, noting that a significant portion of the expenses specified by Aer Rianta were not actually provided.
Gorbachev held a successful meeting with Irish officials at Shannon on April 2, 1989, accompanied by Ireland’s Taoiseach Charles Haughey and P.J O’Meara, a Russian language and literature expert from Trinity College Dublin.
Aer Rianta and other agencies were helping the Soviets develop duty-free airport shops in Moscow and St. Petersburg, hence they were considered beneficial for opening up the Soviet economy. The department had to compare this expensive visit with previous visits of dignitaries to evaluate how to split the costs.
On May 19 1989, Vincent Herlihy wrote to the Department of Foreign Affairs outlining a conversation with Aer Rianta’s Barry O’Shea in respect of the large costs incurred by Aer Rianta in respect of the visit. “He informed me that Aer Rianta had incurred an expenditure of about IR£100,000 on the visit. At this stage, he was looking at bills and wondering whether we could pay those for which we could be considered responsible? For example, the duty free night shop which was converted into the press conference room at our request? Another example was the extensive catering done for our ministerial VIPs in the Aer Lingus room.”
A file warned that media arrangements for Mr Gorbachev’s visit allowed large groups of onlookers to create scenes which were “nothing short of farcical.”
“A free-for-all ensued with the world and his wife mobbing the president at the steps of the aircraft, Press photographers were pushed out of the way and pershaps it was just as well. There were too many notables and local officials crowding the scene during the photocall in the airport’s duty-free shop.”
