Mr. Pat Dawson:

I will talk about the regional airports from the point of view of the imbalance. I agree totally about the imbalance between Cork, Shannon, Dublin and Knock airports. These airports, as the Deputy can see, are in a precarious situation. They got a grant of €10 million but, unfortunately, that will probably not be enough. Those airports must be supported. I note there were 35 million passengers out of Dublin. The figure for Cork and Shannon airports comes to approximately 4 million. At a time when we are talking about using less fuel and petrol on our roads, I would ask those who say it is an easy drive to Dublin Airport from Shannon or Cork to try to do so in two and a half hours. Certainly, that has to be addressed for both outbound and inbound tourism, which is vital to all those regions.