Ms Anne Nolan:

The Deputy raised the issue of the pilot training college in Waterford, on which I will comment briefly. It was very unfortunate and we were very sorry to see it happen. It was, as the Deputy said, very difficult for the students involved. We were asked to help as best we could, given that our remit covered the oversight of the safety at the college. One of the problems at the time was trying to secure training records for the students which they needed to be able to move to another training school to continue their training, for which they had paid a great deal of money. We offered advice and help in liaising with students. We sent a captain to Florida and another person to Waterford to try to help the students. We installed a helpline and paid for students to be repatriated. We did our best to try to help them. As I understand it, 183 students managed to continue their training. The outcome is unknown in the case of the other 107 as some of them returned to Bahrain and the countries from which they had come. We were sincerely sympathetic to everybody involved and did everything within our power. We made suggestions as to how this scenario might be prevented in the future and suggested bonding might be a solution. I understand it would be very expensive to do this and that it might, therefore, make the training colleges uneconomic. I do not think there is legally a need for bonding, but it was a suggestion we thought might help. I think students do not pay the lump sum of €80,000 upfront. Payments are staggered which is probably a help and I hope students will not find themselves in this situation again.

It was remarkable that none of the Irish airlines won an award. An independent panel of judges made the awards and the best airlines won on the day. It was such a successful event that there will be an opportunity to enter the competition next year. It does not mean that there is anything wrong with the Irish airlines. Their safety record is on a par with that of the best airlines globally. They are measured and audited to the same extent as every other airline. A better airline pipped them to the post on the day. There is always next year. We look forward to welcoming some members of the committee to the awards ceremony next year.

Aireon is the way to go. We invested in it just after Christmas and it will solve the dreadful problem with flights such as MH370 because radar monitoring ends at a certain point in the ocean. As I understand it, the system will be up and running by 2018 approximately. We intend to capitalise on the opportunities it might present for the authority in the years ahead. There are changes to the EU policy of the Single European Sky and our business will change. We hope it will give us a new lease of life and help us to get bigger and better and create more jobs in the Irish aviation sector.

The Deputy must pardon me as I cannot remember it and did not bring the figure, but I think the after tax profit figure was in the region of €12 million to €13 million. We paid 30% to the Government. The policy is to ask organisations such as ours to pay at least 30%, recognising that sometimes it might be less and sometimes more.

Last year we paid 50% of our after-tax profits. Because of the pension position, for a few years prior to that we were not in a position to pay a dividend and felt we would like to make it up to the State as best we could, so we offered a 50% dividend in 2012. We hope to be able to pay and that our business will be as good as it possibly can be. I hope I have answered the questions.