Ms Anne Nolan:

I will try to address as many of the questions as possible. I thank the Deputy for his congratulations. It is effectively my third term. The business is so different and so technical that it takes some time to get up to speed. Everybody speaks in acronyms. By the time one gets ahead of the acronyms, a couple of years have gone by. The role of chairman is a completely different role from that of a regular board member.

The Deputy asked about our statistics and whether we are consistently at the top of the safety league. Yes, we have been at the top for the past four or five years. We are consistently considered to be at the top not only by Europe but also by the International Civil Aviation Organization. They are different bodies and they measure different things. As chairman, I get great comfort from the fact that we are generally at the top. We may not always be first but we might be one, two, three, four or whatever. I would be extremely worried if we were at other end of the business. I am rather pleased from that point of view.

The Deputy mentioned the statistics for Cork airport. I had a look at the latest figures and I thought the committee might be interested to see them. Shannon terminal movements are doing very well and are up 21%, almost 22%. Dublin terminal movements are up 7.5%, and Cork is up, which is good. Every time I have seen figures for the past couple of years, the terminal airports have been down. Overall, our terminal business is up 8.1%. That is why we believe we will need our new control tower in a few years' time, sooner rather than later. We did build a new control tower in Cork a few years ago, so we were trying to help out. I was present at its opening a few years ago but, unfortunately, traffic slumped. Aviation works on a collegiate and collaborative basis and we all try to help each other. While responsibility lies with the airports, in the Irish Aviation Authority we are trying to do whatever we can to help float all boats.