Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If 100,000 people are transitioning with Virgin and if it has made the decision to come out and advise the people that this is such a bad deal, would the airline not know, before the submission is made, how many are going to each of the destinations? From a brief look on the Internet, I believe there are 3 million direct seats into Ireland from North America, by a whole host of airlines, including US Airways and Aer Lingus. A quick search of the eastbound flights of Etihad and Emirates airlines shows more than 500,000 seats direct into Ireland. I would have thought that if the witness was telling the committee this was such a bad deal, he would be able to tell us, based on statistics, exactly why it would be such a bad deal.