Mr. Fintan Towey:

Within the envelope of available financial support, we invite the regional airports to put forward their projects that fall within the remit of the regional airport programme. The regional airport programme sets out the type of capital investments we can aid in accordance with the state aid rules. We receive early in the year the proposals from the airports and we have a process to assess their compliance and the extent to which available funding covers all the eligible projects. Out of that we give approval in principle to the airports and they reclaim the approved funding after the expenditure has taken place. Generally speaking, the airport requests are being met. Constraints such as the state aid rules and the available funding are not having the result that regional airports programmes for capital development are being constrained.