Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is the point I was developing. I am conscious of the fact that the delay in Mr. Geoghegan coming to this meeting has not impaired his role as chairman designate. He has been equally effective as chairman and chairman designate.

I follow the Dublin Airport twitter feed, which is quite an entertaining one. I note that there are discussions with Ballygawley Roundabout and other users about various things. The Dublin Airport twitter feed states that t is not an airport for Dublin; it is a national airport that is based in Dublin. I am not sure that I would ever see that on the Shannon Airport feed or the Cork Airport feed. I happen to be one of the few Dublin-based members of this committee. It is important that people watching this are aware that Dublin Airport is a national asset. It is based in Dublin, and obviously, the largest population catchment is close to Dublin, but it is an airport that performs and delivers for the country as a whole. I recall being a member of the Dublin Regional Authority back in 2006. Members had to go off to a meeting in Fingal to talk about the approval of the development of the third runway, as it was known. Here we are, almost 16 years later, and finally that runway is being delivered. I am sure it was discussed in the 1960s in terms of keeping the land, and fair play to those who were doing that. The airport is very much a national asset. I remember going there as a child and looking at pier A, which was effectively dormant for nine or ten months of the year and was wheeled out for a few package holidays in the summer.

Certainly, therefore, it is an enormous asset to the country and I wish the DAA well with it. I have a couple of concerns and a few questions, which I will put to Mr. Geoghegan together and then he can answer.

What were the passenger numbers for last yearvis-à-visthe peak? I do not think that information was in his opening statement. Mr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh appeared before the committee a couple of weeks ago and I made the point that Shannon Airport did approximately 400,000 passengers hopefully this year. That was the equivalent of four days of passenger traffic in Dublin Airport pre-Covid pandemic. I believe Dublin Airport was doing approximately 100,000 passengers per day at that point. It would not, therefore, be a huge disaster if Shannon Airport was doing better. It will not be the end of Dublin Airport or anything like it.

I would be concerned about what Aer Lingus is doing in Manchester. I appreciate that Aer Lingus is part of the larger International Airlines Group, IAG, at this stage and is entitled to go and locate aircraft wherever it thinks there is business. It is rather that we used to fly them all into Dublin, get pre-clearance and then fly them to America. Now it seems to be the other way around. We will be flying to Manchester and not availing of pre-clearance to go to certain routes perhaps in the US. I know there are other routes to Canada and Barbados, which would not get the pre-clearance. Perhaps we could get Mr. Geoghegan's thoughts on that.

I have not flown since January of last year, obviously, because of the pandemic. Mr. Geoghegan made the point about the south terminal. I recall when one would be on an Aer Lingus aeroplane that would turn right for the south terminal at 10 o'clock on a Sunday night or something when one was coming back. Obviously, that terminal may not be as busy in the future as it was in the past.

I read somewhere that all of the DAA's income comes from passenger charges but presumably there is quite a bit of income coming from car parking, concessions from shops, restaurant concessions and so on. Could perhaps elaborate a little bit on that without giving away any commercial sensitivity that he does not want to give away. He has given us the passenger charges figure. How does that compare with most other capital cities? He mentioned Heathrow Airport but obviously Heathrow is a huge beast of an airport compared to almost any other European airport. He welcomed the Government package and that is positive. When does Mr. Geoghegan see us getting back to pre-Covid figures. I think it was 31 million or 32 million passengers in 2019. What is the figure for 2021? What does he hope the figure to be in 2022? When does he hope to be back to the figure of close to where it was pre-pandemic? I will leave it at that for now.