Mr. Evan Cullen:

The Irish Air Line Pilots' Association, IALPA, welcomes this opportunity to appear before the committee on behalf of more than 1,200 professional pilot members in Ireland. Mindful of the short time available to us today, this opening statement is short and focused.

The Air Navigation and Transport Bill 2020 represents the most significant change to Irish aviation safety regulation in 30 years. For many years, IALPA has campaigned for such a Bill. The Bill restructures the Irish Aviation Authority, IAA, into a pure regulatory body by amalgamating the safety regulatory division of the old IAA with the Commission for Aviation Regulation into a new IAA, while separating out the current commercial activities into another State-owned company.

IALPA broadly welcomes this initiative. We were keen to propose additional measures to the Bill to achieve two objectives. The first of those is the future-proofing of the legislation and the second is the enhancement of the IAA as a regulatory body. As licence holders with statutory obligations, it is essential that the regulator listens to those it regulates, such as pilots, engineers and air traffic controllers. To ensure our proposed amendments are professionally based, we retained aviation safety experts and legal professionals specialising in aviation law to help prepare the proposed amendments. IALPA lobbied Deputies and Senators from all parties and none to consider our proposed amendments and, if possible, put them into the parliamentary process. It is important to state clearly that the amendments we propose do not conflict with the programme for Government, nor do they conflict with any published policy of any political party. The proposed amendments do not in any way interfere with the intent of the Bill to restructure aviation regulation in Ireland. They do not take away from the Bill's impact on the organisations and entities that it restructures. Contrary to what has been suggested by others, our amendments do not cut across any existing EU legislation or any recommendations of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, ICAO.

In summary, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, EASA, and ICAO regulations set down the minimum required standards for aviation regulation. Our amendments enhance those minimums by adding to the powers of the new IAA. They enhance the ability of the IAA as the aviation policeman in Ireland.

To our dismay, the proposals from IALPA for the enhancement of aviation regulation have been dismissed by departmental officials and the IAA for reasons that have not been properly explained to us. The first time IALPA became aware of the Department's resistance to the proposed amendments was at a hearing of the Select Committee on Transport and Communications. The Minister was on notice of our amendments but refused to accept any of them. We subsequently met with departmental officials and IAA representatives, none of whom could give us any technical reasons for their opposition to these safety enhancing proposals. They expressed the view that primary legislation is not the place for these amendments but provided no rationale for that position. IALPA is perplexed at the refusal to provide a regulator with additional powers should it need to use them in the future.

For the record, we met the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, for the first time on these proposals for 30 minutes on 1 February 2022. The evening before, the Seanad considered the amendments. Following the events in the Seanad, we met the Minister with officials on 9 February for approximately one hour in the Department of Transport, Lesson Lane. In the 18-plus months that the Bill has been in existence, these are the only two meetings the Minister of State agreed to on this matter, despite numerous requests for such meetings.

It is significant that the Select Committee on Transport and Communications considered the Air Navigation and Transport Bill before the publication of the R116 accident report. As committee members know, four brave crew members died in the accident while in the service of saving others. The two pilots were members of IALPA. The report highlights an "organisational accident", which means a combination of multiple factors aligning to cause the accident. Significantly, the report did not identify anything in the crew performance that contributed to the accident.

However, the report made recommendations, many of which were directed at the Department and the Irish Aviation Authority, IAA. The position of the Irish Air Line Pilots Association, IALPA, is that the Bill would have been more appropriately scrutinised had the transport committee had sight of the accident report and its recommendations prior to the consideration of the Bill by the select committee. IALPA also has considerable concerns around the Bureau Veritas report and its use in the Dáil and Seanad. I will now take the committee through the proposed amendments and the rationale for these amendments. On peer support programmes, there is a briefing letter addressed to the Minister and copied to the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications; IAA performance on the production of adequate and accurate maps and charts, examples of which are contained in the booklet provided; IAA performance in best international practice on safety teams, an example of which is a case study where we were excluded form the safety team; IAA performance on security of Irish aviation, examples of which are contained in the booklet provided. I now hand over to Mr. Brereton, who will cover the peer support programme.