Mr. Michael Vaughan:

To tackle the issues in terms of the breadth of recovery, what we are seeing, and Mr. Quinn is correct, is that where we have cities that have business and conference facilities and venues such as The O2 and other venues such as in Dublin and similarly in Cork, one is getting a mix of business, but where one is talking about pure tourism business on the west coast, such as the area you represent, Vice Chairman, it is a more challenging position. In one way the rural isolation we had when it was not that easy to get to those places was a big benefit in one sense. The new national roads structure means the cities can be a base for a holiday where people can go and visit the attractions along the west coast and get back in the same day. That is a challenge.

I am delighted with the reference to Knock Airport because aviation is a key to this given that 90% of tourists come in by air. Until we tackle the ability to bring mass tourism from central Europe to airports such as Knock, Shannon and Cork, we are going to be in difficulty because our main markets want to come to the west but there is a difficulty in aviation these days in the risk of bringing new services. That was evident in Knock in terms of what needed to be done to bring in a service such as Lufthansa. Aviation policy goes to the heart of the issue. We must find a way to tie down the ability to bring in new air services with the needs of the airlines in order to have a guarantee on the services.