Mr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh:

Frankfurt Airport is a significant international and European airport. It would give options for onward flights, some of which we have in Heathrow Airport and some of which we do not have. It is a direct link into Germany, which is a hugely important economy and there are lots of German companies in Ireland, including in the wider Shannon area so such a link would support and strengthen those companies. In addition to point-to-point connection, there also is connectivity out of Frankfurt Airport which is regarded as the premier international airport in Germany. Heathrow Airport provides some of that connectivity, as it goes west and east, but Frankfurt is a huge hub. When I was a Senator a couple of years ago I went to Frankfurt on my own bat because I am passionate about SMEs. Frankfurt has the largest incubation hub in Germany; it has something like 350 start-up businesses and companies. I had a meeting with its CEO and the hub was interested at that stage in working with innovation hubs in Ireland and we could have created a win-win situation out of that. We could do a lot of collaborative learning from that as well so a connection to Frankfurt would not just be purely airport-related.