According to Mayor, the aim is to encourage people working in Ireland to visit their hometown as often as possible.
People from Osijek, who have been forced to move to Ireland in order to find a job, will soon be able to visit their hometown not only more easily, but also less expensively. After it was recently announced that there will be a direct airline link between Osijek and Dublin, the Town of Osijek has decided to subsidize the cost of airfare for people who work in Dublin, reports Večernji List on October 13, 2016.
“For a flight which costs 2,500 kuna, the town will pay 500 kuna, so the final price will be about 2,000 kuna”, announced the Mayor of Osijek Ivica Vrkić on his Facebook profile, and confirmed the news over the phone. In that way, he said, “the town authorities will subsidize their return and visits to the their hometown”.
“The aim is to encourage our fellow citizens who are temporarily absent to return to Osijek as often as possible, with the ultimate goal for them to return permanently. It is up to them to return, but it is up to us to create conditions for them to be able to find a job here and plan their future”, he explained.
Osijek and Dublin will for the first time be connected with a direct flight on 23 December, and then again on 2 January. These two special holiday charter flights of Croatia Airlines will cost about 2,500 kuna, and will only be a “dress rehearsal” for the introduction of regular direct flights, which are being planned for the spring of next year.
It is expected that Osijek and Dublin will be connected at least once a week, and most likely twice a week. They expect about 150 passengers per flight, not only from Osijek and Slavonia, but also from neighbouring parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, where there are also many people who work in Ireland.
So far, people from Slavonia would usually travel to Dublin from Hungarian capital Budapest or they would go from Osijek to London, and then onwards to Dublin, which is a more complicated and certainly more expensive option.
