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

The question is what if Shannon had a European hub. Mr. Walsh spoke about charges and if there were supports on a route for a period, which is allowed under European Commission rules if the passenger numbers are less than 3 million. He will be aware of that. Will airlines use Shannon as a hub? Hypothetically speaking, let us say we had a link to Frankfurt or Schiphol. Would airlines look around and say that they can fly people into Shannon, where there is new, state-of-the-art scanning equipment? I do not know if it is at the same level as Bahrain, but it is very good - far better than Dublin. That is the question. I know it is a hard one, but it is the sum of this. We had representatives from Dublin Airport before us over the summer. That was at a time when there was chaos at the airport. In fairness, the representatives took on board a lot of the points and the situation has improved considerably. Obviously, we are coming from a different perspective from that of the airlines. They have to make money. Mr. Walsh should tell us what we need to do. He should be utterly frank, as he has been so far. Hypothetically speaking, if Shannon had that European hub, would that be enough?