Mr. Conal Henry:

On that last specific point, it is not something I would like to comment on. Airlines in Europe are almost entirely privately owned enterprises. They make decisions based on what they think will maximise their shareholder value in the short and long term. Aircraft, by definition, are moveable assets and are very easily moved. An airport is never at a point that it can fix it because it is always under threat of the removal of that capacity. As a result, we always have to stay on it.

Routes beget other routes, and the Senator said that in terms of Dublin Airport being a hub. The more routes there are in an airport, the more likely it is to get other routes. Each of the four western airports does not have enough routes to do that. There are European hub routes coming into Cork and US routes coming into Shannon. There are routes into London from Knock and routes into Germany from Kerry. Those four airports are watching and trying to steal business off each other, meanwhile most of the traffic is going to the east coast. There are enough passengers and demand for travel in the western half of Ireland to create a fairly significant aviation proposition. How do we do that? We will probably have to rethink the whole lot.