Mr. Evan Cullen:

The average cost for basic training of an airline pilot is approximately €100,000.

The majority of pilots in Ireland self-fund by means of various schemes but largely they are backed by their parents who mortgage their homes. These pilots are now at the receiving end of lay-offs and redundancies throughout the business. On top of this, we have Ireland's unique facilitation of bogus self-employment of all workers in aviation throughout Europe. Ireland facilitates bogus self-employment of pilots and other aviation workers in order to provide cheap labour on what are, effectively, zero-hour contracts. This can only be done through Irish legislation and Irish corporate law. These people have been devastated by what has happened because when they do not fly they do not earn. These people are in particularly dire straits and many of them are young pilots. There are plenty of official documents on this.