Mr. Willie Walsh:

The interviews I do in the United Kingdom do not specifically relate to IAG. They have principally been on the expansion of capacity at the airports in the south east of England. In the past, I supported the development of a new runway at Heathrow Airport. I do not support this or argue against it anymore because a decision on the matter was made by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government when it came to power. I do not get involved other than to say the decision of the British Government to stop the development of the third runway in 2010 was wrong.

To place the matter in context, I will speak about British Airways. A perception seems to have been created that this is all about taking the 23 slots owned by Aer Lingus, transferring them to British Airways and then using them to expand its network. Slots vary from the summer season to the winter season. I carried out an analysis of British Airways's operations at Heathrow Airport yesterday. The company operated 314 flights - 314 slots - of which 49 were domestic and 180 were to European destinations. This means that 229 of our slots were devoted to short-haul activities. That is ten times the number of slots we are talking about in the context of Aer Lingus. Anybody who believes we need Aer Lingus's slots to expand our network need only consider the fact that we have 229 such slots being operated for short-haul services. Many of these slots could be converted to provide long-haul services. When we acquired BMI, we gave a commitment that 14 of the slots we took over would be used for long-haul service expansion and that the remainder would continue to be used to support our short-haul network. The reason for this is that in order to operate a long-haul network with transfer traffic, it is necessary to have a short-haul network to feed it.

We have more than enough slots to expand British Airways's long-haul operations.

Our competitors cannot do that. In terms of the UK plc, it is a restriction on the development of the British economy; it is not any restriction on BA. We have loads of slots. We can expand our long-haul network for the foreseeable future without any issue from the slot pool we have. A total of 27% of our slots are used for long haul and 73% for short haul. We have tonnes of them. We have the slots available within BA to expand our long-haul network as and when we want. What facilitates the expansion of the long-haul network is efficient new long-haul aircraft. We have quite a number of those on order but we have plenty of slots for all the expansion plans we have. None of the slots Aer Lingus operates is being looked at in any way for the expansion of the BA network and that is why the ownership of the slots will rest in Aer Lingus. The company will continue to own those slots and will determine how it uses them.

Deputy Dooley said he would take it as a "No" but I did not say "No". I said I had addressed the issues and I did not say "No". Other committee members-----