Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No, not feed into. I am worried about happens when we do a body of work, so let us consider the state of aviation in Ireland and the realities of it were put in context for me when we visited Holland. As many as 71 million passengers use the main airport of Holland, which is Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, and that country has a population of 17 million. By contrast, Ireland has a population of 5 million but more than 31 million passengers have come through the hub of a major airport and, therefore, we must get more traffic. Shannon Airport can take 4.5 million passengers and is used by under 1 million people, so it has excess capacity and I suggest we seek 3.5 million passengers for that airport. I am not certain of the number for Cork Airport but I know that it is lower. Unfortunately, the Government is not looking at divesting a huge amount but we need to divest to bring the airports in this country to a level where they are sustainable and provide balanced regional development.