Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree. That is why, arising from our meeting in Shannon and, hopefully, from our meeting in Cork, we will see the importance of the points Mr. Henry made in his presentation and how advocating that all airports outside of Dublin remain in the regional airports programme is essential. The Shannon stopover was removed. The whole aviation policy has changed. IATA will tell us that there is pent-up demand. Mr. Henry is right in that it makes no sense - I am wearing my Cork hat for a second - for people from Portlaoise or Thurles who are travelling out of Ireland to go east. They should come to Cork or, in some cases, go west. As a committee, we need to sit down with the Government and the airports to rethink and re-imagine aviation policy. There are major issues in Dublin Airport as we have seen. We need to return to this and invite the DAA to come back before us. I commend Mr. Henry on his proactivity in respect of that matter. We supported him in that regard during the private meeting in the context of the whole strategy.

I will conclude by wishing Mr. Henry well. The day we were in Shannon, he demonstrated great ability. Today, he has done the same. I look forward to the transport committee having a strong influence, with the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and the Minister of State, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, on aviation policy in the coming months