Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Not at all. It was very good. I found it entertaining and useful. I thank Mr. Geoghegan for being here. It really was not the two and a half or three hours of interrogation he might have expected as a chairman-designate coming before an Oireachtas committee. We have not really discussed anything related to that, but we have still had a very useful conversation about Dublin Airport, the DAA and Irish aviation generally. Going back to Mr. Geoghegan's Twitter feed, I saw a picture of Concorde there in 1984. I think I was out there that day on what was the old Pier A. Once a year, the balcony was opened and people were allowed to go out there. It is something I would be very interested in, even if I was not on this committee, although I am delighted to be on it. I picked up on a point to which Senator Buttimer alluded. We suggested to Pádraig Ó Céidigh that we would visit Shannon Airport. I have visited the airport but have never flown in or out of it and I do not know an awful lot about it. Back in 2014, as a member of the old Dublin Regional Authority, I got a tour of Terminal 2. We saw all the bomb-sniffing equipment, the baggage inspection stuff and the X-ray machines. It was really interesting. The committee would benefit from a trip to Dublin Airport, particularly to look at the north runway and all of the work that is going on there. Whether we were to do it collectively or individually, I would certainly be very interested in that. Perhaps someone could contact me about the logistics of that at a later stage.

I will make a point I made to Pádraig Ó Céidigh. Every Minister for Transport has been Dublin-based. The last one who was not was Noel Dempsey who got absolutely lambasted over the cost of Pier D. People said it was miles away and totally unnecessary and redundant. They said the same thing about Terminal 2. The figures from 2019 proved all of those critics wrong. I do not believe there is a capital city airport in Europe or in the world that has as greater ratio of passengers transiting to the population of the country as Dublin Airport. That might be something to explore. Heathrow is huge but six times the population of the UK, or even England, does not transit through it every year. As a country, we are enormously indebted to aviation. I made this point to Pádraig Ó Céidigh. Duty-free shopping was invented at Shannon Airport, as was Irish coffee. It was the last point one reached in Europe. It had a very interesting deal with the Soviet Union and Aeroflot with regard to refuelling at one point.

Shannon has to reinvent itself. Dublin is constantly reinventing itself. Thirty years ago, nobody knew where Dubai and Abu Dhabi were in terms of transit points. Dublin was becoming a mini Dubai in terms of pre-clearance going west. Dublin was used by people coming in from the UK, particularly, avoiding Heathrow, coming into Dublin and going west. I live in Dublin and Dublin Airport is my airport but it is more than that. It is the nation's main airport.

The DAA has a commercial mandate, I assume, whereby it must compete with Shannon. The witnesses would be accused of all kinds of anticompetitive, monopolistic or cartel-like behaviour if it did not. Equally, I would have thought, though the witnesses can disagree, that the competitors include Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Barcelona and all those airports which are not monster airports but are secondary in terms of passenger numbers. They are the 30 million or 40 million passenger airports, rather than the 120 million or 200 million in Istanbul or wherever. Geography plays a part.

Aviation is critical to Ireland's recovery and success. It is a huge employer with aircraft leasing and everything else. I suppose the ask for us as policymakers, politicians and legislators is that we explore the issue of the Commission for Aviation Regulation versus the IAA. We have a briefing about the air navigation Bill in the next hour. The issue is as to the reason for "the treacle", which is not a phrase I have heard used before but is apt to describe the slowing down of things through bureaucracy. Other than that, what asks do the witnesses have of us as politicians?

The DAA is an enormous contributor to Fingal's rates bill and Fingal benefits enormously from its existence. Where do witnesses see the growth? Is it the US, Europe or the Middle East and the east? What airlines is it? Is it Aer Lingus, Ryanair or lots of other airlines? I knew they have to be commercially sensitive but what competitor airports are the witnesses most worried about? I mentioned Manchester. I would be concerned about the Aer Lingus deal. Planes that would have flown out of Dublin to the US are now flying out of Manchester. Are there other concerns about what is coming along and trying to steal our business?

Many airlines have downsized and parked aircrafts in deserts. Some of them will never come back out of deserts. Are the witnesses concerned that some airlines that flew into Dublin have smaller fleets and Dublin might be towards the bottom of the queue? How do we get back up the queue in terms of airlines' reallocation of aircraft?