Mr. Stephen Kavanagh:

There is no contradiction and, with the documents available, I hope this will become transparent over time.

I will address Deputy Noel Harrington's issue regarding the existing code-share relationships. While they are strong, mutually beneficial relationships, there is not necessarily full alignment of mutual interests. If United Airlines is selling a ticket between Chicago and Dublin, its first commercial instinct is to keep the customer in its own metal. It will, therefore, attempt to direct the customer to Heathrow Airport and on to an Aer Lingus service from there to Dublin. That is the natural conflict in the current code-share relationships. The difference between such a relationship and the one suggested in IAG's proposal is that American Airlines would have an aligned and equivalent economic interest in selling a direct ticket from Chicago to Dublin. While the current partner portfolio has worked very well for Aer Lingus and our partners, the depth of the relationships in terms of the co-ordination of schedules and customer proposition is constrained by regulations. In the absence of an alignment of economic interests, there will always be competing demands between the two parties. While Aer Lingus has strong, sustainable partnerships, we had diagnosed that deeper co-operation would be part of the next phase of our strategic road map, but before we had acted on it, we received IAG's proposal.