Mr. Evan Cullen:

I knew the two pilots of Rescue 116 personally. At least eight people I have known have died flying aircraft. Not one of those deaths would have occurred if everybody else had been doing what they were supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, we do not do regulation well in Ireland. We write good regulations and we always have an A on our copybook but how we do things in practice is not good, which I believe is a cultural issue. It is not good in aviation just as it was not good in financial services or other aspects of Irish life, for which we have had to pay billions in compensation. There is an opportunity to get this right. We have never refused a meeting with anybody. We have continually asked for meetings with everybody but our willingness to meet has not been reciprocated. Even the letters we sent to the committee, Senators and Deputies were copied to the IAA and the Minister of State to make sure everybody knew what we are saying. We do not even get that courtesy returned to us. The IAA is sending politicians information and letters which refer to us and to our position but it denies us even the courtesy of having that correspondence copied to us. We then have to get it from politicians who are asking for our reaction to it. If the IAA extended that basic courtesy to us, it would help a lot.