Dr. Chris Horn:

I thank the Deputy for his initiative on 3 June in pressing the former Minister to establish a task force. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions was represented directly on the task force by invitation from the Minister and was fully participative. In addition, we issued an invitation to all interested parties to make written submissions to us and we received 26 such written submissions. All of these, by the way, were published on the Department's website at the time. As the Deputy stated, I personally had no involvement in the constitution of the task force.

I note the imbalance between Dublin Airport and the regional airports. It has been an historical issue in the country. As chairman, I felt that my role was to try to achieve consensus across the task force. Therefore, I did not want any recommendation in the task force recommendations that would not be supported by every member of the task force and so the recommendations were by consensus. There were differences of opinion, as one would naturally expect. Where there were differences and not consensus, we were unable to produce recommendations in that respect.

Flights to and from the United States are absolutely critical for the business sector, and particularly the indigenous business sector. It is incredibly frustrating that the restrictions, at least the recommendations from the Government, are no-fly and essential travel only. That makes it difficult for senior managers and leadership in young companies to ask their own teams and staff to travel when the Government recommendation is not to fly and essential travel only. The lack of connectivity and ability to fly to the United States right now is hurting the high-technology indigenous sector.