Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I remind members, officials and those in the public Gallery to ensure their mobile phones are switched off for the duration of this meeting as they interfere with the broadcasting equipment.

This meeting has been convened to consider the Revised Estimate for Vote 31 - Transport, Tourism and Sport - which was referred by the Dáil to the committee with an instruction to report back to the Dáil. I welcome the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Shane Ross, and his officials to the meeting. I thank them for the advance briefing which was provided and circulated to members of the committee. I also wish to thank the Minister and his officials for the open and constructive dialogue with the committee secretariat's financial scrutiny team as regards developing their briefing document for this meeting.

I wish to inform the Minister that the committee has agreed to proceed programme-by-programme and will initially focus on specific subheads before broaching any questions on the remainder of the programme. I will refer to the briefing document prepared by the committee secretariat's financial scrutiny team to guide our consideration of the Revised Estimate.

Does the Minister wish to make any opening remarks before we proceed to programme A, the civil aviation section, or does he wish to go straight into that?