Mr. Sean Doyle:

I will add a comment on behalf of Aer Lingus. I agree with what Ryanair has said. We have a presence at Cork Airport where we expanded our network last year. We also expanded our network this summer from Shannon Airport, adding Paris and Barcelona as destinations. We do not necessarily see that the growth of connectivity out of Dublin Airport comes at the expense of the regions, but I do think the regions are more vulnerable coming out of this crisis, as Ryanair stated, without the effect of some stimulus packages. We remain committed to the region but I also urge the Government to execute the recommendations of the task force.

What Dublin is about for Aer Lingus is a hub and what that enables us to do is to begin to expand our north Atlantic presence at the hub and to compete internationally with other hubs for traffic. That enables two things; the first is that Ireland is very well placed to connect traffic from North America into Europe. In enabling that connection traffic, we are also able to expand the direct services into and out of the island of Ireland, which gives us benefits in terms of FDI and tourism. I do not see the development of Dublin as a hub coming at the expense of regional airports. I think we both remain committed to regional airports by virtue of the capacity that has been added but they need to be very competitive coming out of this crisis if we are to restore the level of commitment we would have had in the past.