Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We see the figures for Dublin Airport. They are going to grow exponentially. We all agree that we need Dublin Airport to succeed, but we all want to boost traffic through our regional airports and to examine ways of doing so. Through the mid-term review of the regional airports programme, I want feedback for the consultation process, which I hope to start in quarter 1 of next year through the issues paper.

The PSO application is under consideration within the Department. The current policy is on domestic PSO routes into, for example, Donegal and Kerry. It provides PSOs for remote and isolated areas. There is a PSO between Donegal and Dublin. There was another between Dublin and Kerry, but Ryanair stepped in and said that it did not need a PSO and could run the route on a commercial basis. That is the direction I want all of our airports to be able to work towards, including Shannon.

My door is open in terms of what is required to drive more traffic through our regional airports. It is through the mid-term review of the regional aviation policy that we can open the debate up to more than just airports, for example, chambers of commerce. I met Limerick Chamber last week. Through the review, we can talk to our tourism industry and the Irish Hotels Federation to get their views on how to redirect traffic into the regions. People will have the opportunity to feed into the review between now and the end of December. This committee has done a great deal of work in this regard and plans to do more. By the time the public consultation process opens, people will have fed into the issues paper-----