Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We have to get through this summer first. The immediate issue is making sure we get everyone off on their holidays and back home. Coming out of Covid, there are significant changes likely in the aviation sector. What I said to the board yesterday is we should be meeting again in the autumn period as part of our wider assessment of what is happening in aviation.

I noted at the weekend Mr. Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, on the front page of the Financial Timessignalling significant changes. Increased prices, Mr. O'Leary says, due to a variety of different factors, form one of the changes. I think other changes will be, and this is happening across different supply chains, a reconsideration of and a moving away from just-in-time tight numbers and facilities to having a more just-in-case supply chain management so that there is a bit of a buffer and, if anything happens, there is not the cascading of difficulties we are seeing in some airlines at present. There is a big change coming for sustainability in aviation. We must plan that.

One of the lessons we have learned, and I said this to the Dublin and Cork airport boards yesterday, is it also behoves us to reconsider how we make use of the likes of Shannon Airport, which is relatively underutilised at a time when other airports are straining at the maximum of capacity. That regional rebalancing is part of what we need to do.