Ms Lynne Embleton:

Let me start with the questions. Mr. Moriarty will comment on the hosting of the IT services and Ms Carberry will comment on refunds.

The experience described by the Deputy about what it was like on that Saturday I recognise. There were thousands of customers impacted where we simply could not process them, we could not move them, we could not depart flights and there were thousands of customers caught up in that both outside the terminal, inside the terminal and airside as well so people who had gone through the system but then we could not depart them. The scale of disruption was phenomenal and this is why we are saying that this was a really exceptional event.

What I also recognise in what the Deputy said is the information about when the problem would be fixed and when could flights depart. We felt the same. We did not know when it was fixed. We were in constant contact with our IT provider to understand what the issue was and how quickly it could be resolved. Throughout the day we had moving updates as to when we may get the systems back up and running but until we had the systems back, we were unable to give any real certainty. What did become clear is we needed to cancel flights in the afternoon because we physically would not have been able, even if the systems came back, to get all of the day's flights up in the air in that time. It was, undoubtedly, a really difficult day for customers and, again, for our staff. It was an uncomfortable day all round.

On the questions about why this happened from an IT perspective and whether should this have happened, it should not have happened. Indeed, the contract that we have with our supplier was for this not to happen and for there to be a robust backup solution. We have two incidences of our system and two pathways to those to give us resilience so it should not have happened. As the Deputy alluded to, one was damage to a cable by a company that was operating in the area and the other was a card failure in the backup system, which was a failure that they had not seen in 4,000 instances of using that card. The two things coming together was just highly unusual.

Mr. Moriarty will comment on the IT set-up and the supply stream.