Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Moloney. We will now move to questions. Members will have ten minutes each. There is a significant number of members present, which is great. The ten-minute slot is for questions from members and answers from the witnesses. In the interest of clarity, I ask members and witnesses to keep their questions or answers as brief as possible. The travelling public has come to us with queries and we are duty bound to follow up on those queries. We have a rota system and I am first up this week.

I will come to the witnesses in the order they gave their opening statements. I want to deal with matters in real time. We are fast approaching the bank holiday weekend. Does Aer Lingus have an indication at this stage whether flights to or from Dublin, Cork or Shannon airports will be cancelled? When will that be made known? How does Aer Lingus contact passengers in such situations? Can they get alternative flights? If so, how quickly can that be done?

I ask Ms Embleton to deal with the impact of the Heathrow cap. Obviously, there are Heathrow routes to Dublin, but also to Shannon and Cork, and some of those flights have been cancelled recently. She referred to the Heathrow cap being mandatory. We are hearing that some airlines are ignoring the mandatory nature of the cap. I ask her to feed that into the response of Aer Lingus in those areas.

During the pandemic, Aer Lingus gave vouchers to passengers. We have received queries from the public on this and our understanding is that the vouchers can only be used on flights out of Ireland and in euro currency. Will Aer Lingus consider, post pandemic, that the vouchers could be used on any Aer Lingus flight into or out of Ireland, or elsewhere, and in a currency other than euro?