Mr. Joe Gilmore:

I thank the Senator. He highlights the fact that one critical element in all of this has been our staff. As the other airports will know, through all of this staff have been severely impacted. I acknowledge their support, co-operation and understanding through all of this. They have suffered severely, as have many of the hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their jobs through this. Without them we would not have been able to do what we did. They were very supportive, as were the State agencies, the Department of Transport and the Irish Aviation Authority in ensuring that we maintained our licensing, all our fire safety, security and air traffic control systems, and all the operational requirements. It took quite an effort but we got back up and running in July and, thankfully, we met all of the licensing and safety requirements and were able to get back up to full operation. We had to take those measures which might have sounded severe, but from a cost perspective and being a commercially run business here, we had to take those measures at that time.