Mr. Joe Hamill:

Absolutely. To be clear about the Aran Islands service, we have extended the contract to September. There has been a review by consultants. As it is a public service obligation, PSO, service, it must be operated under certain EU rules. We are looking at re-tendering the service again to see what the possibilities are. To be frank, part of the issue with this is purely financial. The allocation for these services has remained static, but each time a contract comes up for renewal the costs tend to go up for various reasons. It has been a difficult issue. Essentially, the PSO service for the Aran Islands will be in place until the end of September, but we will be working on the issue in the meantime. We have been engaged in a great deal of consultation with some of the local community development groups and so forth and will have to see where it brings us.

On the other two - Inishbofin and Cleggan - if, as I mentioned earlier, we can find a good public use for at least one of them, that would be a big plus. We have a ministerial decision that if there is not a use like that, we will try to see what we can realise then by going to the market, but we have not done that yet pending more clarification on the Coast Guard issue.