Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

For the Deputy's information, we are operating with one Government jet at present because the other one is essentially out of service. When we put it in for its scheduled servicing in the US over the summer, it was clear that it had many other problems. I made the decision that we were not going to spend any more money on it because I did not think it could be justified or that it represented value for money. We essentially stopped any more expenditure on that and I will be bringing a recommendation to Government in the coming weeks on what decisions should be made around air transport for Ministers and for the Taoiseach. We will be doing that in a way that I can assure the Deputy will be cost effective and will represent value for money. In the meantime we are operating with the existing Learjet which is the smaller of two and has the shorter range of the two but it is doing a reasonable job in the circumstances in which it is operating.