Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. I want to talk about new aviation. I had a meeting in Shannon Airport yesterday and the people there are very excited about the return of transatlantic routes in March and the new summer routes out of the airport. As the Chairman said, they want to build more routes and more connectivity. One of the areas of real potential for Shannon, of which we are only scratching the surface, is new aviation. Last October, FedEx launched a drone from Shannon, which delivered a parcel across the Shannon Estuary to Foynes. We have a hub of testing facilities around Shannon looking at new aviation. The one issue we have not looked at yet is hydrogen-powered flight. We saw the first such commercial flight take off in December and many European countries, particularly Italy and Germany, are seizing all available European money to look into sustainable aviation. It is where people are going. There is a crazy irony that teenagers will go on the Internet and buy a pair of jeans that has to be shipped across the world but they may feel guilty about travelling on an aeroplane because of the environmental footprint. People will increasingly look to sustainable travel, particularly for international journeys. Is there anything the Minister hopes to lead out from his Department beyond scratching the surface in this area? We need to go deep and ensure we are leaders, as we always were in the Shannon region, on sustainable aviation.