Mr. David Hodnett:

Deputy Troy asked some direct questions and I would like to answer those. Are there any consequences for Ryanair for not notifying us of the cancellation? The answer is "No." There is no legal obligation on Ryanair to notify us that it is going to cancel flights. The regulation was originally introduced to cover cancellations that happen at much shorter notice and would not be planned in the same way as Ryanair has announced. It is straightforward. There are no consequences.

On the use of legal powers, the regulator in the UK was marching under some provisions relating to the Enterprise Act 2002, a separate legal basis from what we use here. It reached a similar direction to ours. Potentially we could have reached exactly the same point on the same day using direction under section 45 of the Aviation Regulation Act 2001. There is no lack of legal power there. As the commissioner has just outlined, she decided to take a different approach and get the airline to agree with this. There is no point in using a direction if an airline has already done what we have asked of it. That was the position taken regarding the information. Ryanair was giving people information at certain times regarding refunds, rerouting and so forth. That was on its website. Ms Mannion has explained all the steps she took to ensure that important information was put out there.

Deputy O'Keeffe asked about notification. This relates to the IAA point on pilots. I will let the representatives of the IAA speak to that.