Mr. Pádraig Ó Ríordáin:

I thank the Senator. Going through his questions, we have done a huge amount of work on making security as efficient as possible. The regulations for security are imposed on us by Europe and implemented here in Ireland as well. We have to make sure that we are as efficient as we can be in respect of those rules. The new gels rules, for example, and various other aspects do slow things down. I can tell the Senator that we have had our senior management down on the floor of Dublin Airport from 4 a.m. to make sure we understand exactly what is the process and how to make it as efficient as we can.

In terms of US Customs and Border Protection, CBP, I agree with the Senator. It is necessary to go through a second process but their process is different. The difficulty is that if we applied that process to everybody, including those to whom we do not have to apply it, that would slow things down even more.

We pay a huge amount of attention to getting an efficient process and anybody who has used Dublin Airport in recent years will find that we have got a lot better at that in terms of queue times and everything else.

In terms of pay, I totally understand the Senator's point. We have had a stressed country. There is only a certain amount of money to go around but the reason I think about this slightly differently is because I know that a good chief executive can make a difference of potentially tens or even hundreds of millions of euro in terms of the country and in terms of daa. If a new chief executive can increase passenger flow into Ireland by 1% or 2% by making sure that we leverage the company to the maximum of its ability, the benefit to Ireland will be off the charts. In the way I look at the world, to lose something like that would be a shame, but I understand the differences of opinion on that.

With regard to metro west, I am not in a position to go into it too much but our position is that we believe metro west is currently the best option, but we would be very happy to get into the debate on that.

On Cork, what the Senator said is arguable in that €200 million was spent on the Cork terminal. The original terminal was over 50 years old so it had to be renewed, but that came at a bad time in the cycle in terms of what has happened. We are doing everything we can to focus on Cork. There is a permanent sub-committee of the board that focuses only on Cork. We have four Cork people on the board, including myself. Our chief executive travels to Cork very regularly, which was not a feature previously. We have a very good chief executive in Cork. We have the Cork Airport Development Council. A major focus of daa is making sure that Cork improves, and we have a lot to bring to the party in terms of relationship with airlines and so on to do that.

In terms of the pensions and trustees, as the Senator knows, the trustees are separate from the company so I do not want to comment unduly on the trustees. The trustees are regulated by the Pensions Board as well so it has its job to do in regard to that.

On the regulation of airport charges, in recent years we have been very commercial in what we do. What we want to achieve as a board is to make daa a very commercial organisation so we are not relying on price caps or artificial anything to make the business very strong. We are just implementing normal business practice.

I do not think there is regulatory capture. I am being as objective as I can when I say that the current regulatory system does not work because it is defined in a particular way. I will give the committee an example. Developing Dublin Airport as a hub, for example, would benefit Aer Lingus significantly but Aer Lingus opposes the money we would spend on a hub because it sees that as a much shorter-term issue than we do. It will figure that, in the long term, we will have to find some way of getting it built anyway. Sometimes there is a disconnect in terms of what it is we are trying to achieve for the benefit of the country. That is often not reflected very well in the current regulatory scenario, therefore, we welcome the regulatory review.

On IAG, our position is straightforward. We have not seen the IAG offer yet so it is very difficult for us to comment unduly on it but in regard to the slots in Heathrow, for example, the Irish traffic into those slots is very strong. The loads on the Irish routes into Heathrow are very strong, therefore, those routes should be sustainable on their own merits. They also feed a lot of traffic into the British Airways network and into the IAG network, therefore, they are very valuable routes.

In terms of looking at what IAG could potentially contribute on a Dublin basis, it could contribute significantly in regard to transatlantic routes and in regard to the hub. Heathrow is jam-packed. It does not have any customer borders protection, for example, so therefore it is a much less attractive product in terms of getting people from the United Kingdom to the United States. If people are flying from the north of England through Heathrow to the United States, they are much better off flying through Dublin. There are potential merits to having access to that IAG system and channelling it through Dublin. We are quite measured on this and we would like to see what will be the final outline of the transaction.