Mr. Evan Cullen:

To address Deputy Ellis's question, the aircraft which are flying between Dublin and Heathrow on the Aer Lingus slots are catered for and maintained in Dublin. The proper cross synergy one expects to happen is that they would be catered for and maintained in Heathrow. That would be true of aircraft that are currently catered for in Shannon and Cork. If IAG was to follow up on the cost synergy logic of its whole existence then that catering contract should go into Heathrow, hence a loss of work and employment in Dublin. It equally follows that flights from Dublin to Barcelona would then be catered for and maintained in Barcelona where Vueling has its main base. Flights from Dublin to Madrid would then be catered for and maintained in Madrid where Iberia has its presence. That is how the cost synergies work and that would have a knock-on impact.

In the hard copy of my presentation which I gave to the committee, IAG identifies how it is targeting cost synergies in the existing IAG companies. There are revenue synergies and they are positive for everybody but the cost synergies are just as dramatic in the IAG model. Somebody said there were not many defenders for the privatisation. There is a reality about the privatisation of Aer Lingus in 2006. It is almost a certainty that Aer Lingus would not have had the cash buffer that it needed to get through 2009 if it had not had the cash on its balance sheet because the cash was not going to come from the Government in 2009. I am not saying I am a fan of privatisation but we have to recognise the cash buffer that got Aer Lingus through its bad patch came from the privatisation in 2006. For reasons of balance I thought I would say that.