Ms Mary Considine:

To address the Senator's question about funding, we have through the budget secured a contribution towards capital funding for next year, which is very welcome. The real challenge for us is the level of operational losses and in the context of that, our immediate ask of Government, which we hope will be included in the national economic plan, is inclusion in the regional airports programme, which would see us benefit for operational funding to cover essential costs like the cost of providing fire service and security cover at the airport. That would be an immediate ask of Government to help us survive this crisis so we can recover and rebuild.

The Senator referred to the ongoing dialogue with the HSE. We have engaged with our employees, a number of whom, particularly those on continuing temporary lay-off or on a reduced working week, would be interested in taking up additional work as contact tracers. We have passed that information to the HSE and are in ongoing discussions with it.