Michael Lowry (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There are many people here who could probably take some of the blame but there are a lot more out there, including Government Ministers and advisers, who should have seen this coming down the line. As somebody who has some clue about business, I know that the cost of what the DAA has done will outweigh what it has saved because it is now paying treble time and compensation. The exercise it is now involved in is very expensive and nobody can put a price on the reputational damage done to both the DAA and the country in general. If you picked up The New York Timeslast weekend, you would have seen the international publicity the events at Dublin Airport got. Nobody could buy that kind of bad publicity. The point I am making is that this decision was badly thought out from the start. While I accept that the witnesses are totally genuine and are saying what they are saying in good faith, I really do not believe the answers we have got today will address the problem.

I will not ask for a guarantee because it is impossible to give one. However, on the basis of everything that has been said, there seems an inevitability of further delays at Dublin Airport.