Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses to the Chamber here this morning. It is good to have this engagement. I hope it will be ongoing because although their sectors are being supported through this crisis, their troubles have not ended. I am sure they will articulate that strongly.

I will begin by addressing Dr. Horn. When I spoke in the Dáil on 3 June last, I asked the then Minister, Shane Ross, to introduce an aviation task force. I am glad that he and his Department initiated that and that Dr. Horn chaired that effort. There were certainly some positives in it. I had some difficulties with the constitution of the task force. That was not of Dr. Horn's doing. I felt that there were certain omissions. For example, the workers were not adequately represented on the task force. Many issues transpired in that regard. In particular, the Aer Lingus and Ryanair workers, and indeed the workers in Shannon Airport who faced 20% pay cuts, felt that their only representation was that from their unions, whereas senior management had another layer of engagement in the form of the task force and direct access to the Minister.

I would like to hear Dr. Horn's opinions on some of the shortcomings with the task force. It looked at getting aeroplanes back in the sky. I suppose that is where aviation has to restart. There is neither an aviation sector nor a travel and tourism sector unless there are flights in and out of Ireland. One of the shortcomings was that the task force did not address the gross imbalances we have in Irish aviation. Last year, in a normal trading year, 32.7 million people came in and out of Dublin Airport and 1.6 million people came through Shannon Airport. In the second quarter of this year, 155,000 people came through Dublin Airport and just 120 passengers came through Shannon Airport. That is a significant imbalance. It was there last year. It is there this year. It is more augmented this year. The task force did not adequately look at it.

Another shortcoming related to all the stakeholders here that have looked at re-engaging the routes into Europe. I welcome what happened yesterday with the European Commission and the traffic light system. We will not see an immediate return from it but we will see the airlines being able to plan their routes for the remainder of this year and the spring season. I hope that will benefit the tourism sector as well.

I would like to hear Dr. Horn's views on how we re-establish flights to the US in a meaningful way bearing in mind its R-level is way above ours. I would like him to reflect on that. Dr. Horn might briefly speak on the imbalances also.

I have a question for Mr. Hackett and Mr. Dawson from the travel agency sector. Given everything in the July stimulus, which is behind us, and in yesterday's budget, and the stimuli that have come in again for businesses and tourism, what more needs to be done between now and early spring? Everyone talks about tourism starting on St. Patrick's Day. What more needs to happen between now and then for the various sectors? We might hear from Dr. Horn first.