Mr. Eddie Wilson:

We had the announcement that flights from other bases do not affect our staff in Shannon and Cork Airports. We spoke to them about the closures of those bases in recent weeks in terms of the winter schedule. Our hope is that we will reopen those bases next summer, that is, from 1 April onwards. What we need, however, is some basis for doing that and as a start we must be able to, at least, have a fighting chance before we get demand to recover. Flights for Christmas will be there from 14 December onwards and we would hope that people will be back travelling by that time.

We are committed to Shannon and Cork Airports but the demand is just not there at the moment. November is typically one of the worst months to try to stimulate people to travel and pricing is not going to do that. It is the policy failures of this Government and it needs to rapidly do something about it before this situation gets worse. It does not affect our colleagues there at the moment because, unfortunately, they have already been laid off and we would hope to have them back next summer. I hope there is some action as a result of this meeting, in particular by the Minister, to adopt the aviation task force recommendations and put something in place for next summer to attract traffic back into Cork and Shannon Airports.