Mr. Owen Reidy:

I will make one brief comment. I agree with Deputy Maloney's comments. In response to Deputy Ellis's question as to where the staff would come from if IAG take over and people are outsourced, again, nobody knows but the speculation, when people compare it with Iberia, is that it would be the ground staff yet again. To put it in context, this goes back to Deputy Maloney's point about the profitability of the airline. Since 2008 our members and the members of all the unions in Aer Lingus have put their shoulder to the wheel and saved significant moneys. Many of the staff have had their terms and conditions of employment bought out and have gone on to lower terms and conditions of employment to reduce the cost base so that the organisation can be as lean and as efficient as many of its competitors. They have done that, they have been on pay pauses, pay freezes and pay cuts and have had, effectively, what was a defined benefit pension scheme, albeit one which got into serious trouble, changed into a defined contribution scheme and we are not out of the woods on some elements of that yet.

Given that people have made those contributions and sacrifices there is no way they will willingly lie down and have a situation where their jobs are outsourced whether by the current owner or any new owner. We have current, existing, flexible, agile agreements with the current owner, one of which is a registered employment agreement. We know the Government wants to reinstitute that legislation to allow for further registered employment agreements. If people get certainty and clarity, it creates the context where they can continue to work in an environment to make sure that the company continues to be successful. The absence of that kind of clarity is usually replaced by chaos and that is not what anybody wants but potentially that is what could happen.