Mr. Michael O'Leary:

Okay. This autumn, we are operating from 88 bases. A base is an airport across Europe where we base aircraft, cabin crew, engineers and pilots, who stay overnight or live there. We serve 234 airports across 37 countries. The fleet this winter is at 517 aircraft. That will rise to almost 700 aircraft over the next five years. We are operating more than 2,500 routes with 3,000 daily flights.

Looking at the existential trauma of Covid-19, prior to that, which was March in fiscal year, FY, 2020, we carried 149 million passengers. If it had not been for Covid-19, that would have been 150 million. In FY 2021, that collapsed, and we have never seen a collapse like that before. We have been through the Gulf War, 9/11 and Icelandic volcanoes. At worst our fleet was grounded for two or three days. We were grounded for 18 months, as was the whole industry. W we were not unique. That is the challenge that faces us and Ireland as a transport and tourism destination on the peripheral edge of Europe. We collapsed to 27 million passengers in March 2021. We recovered a significant proportion of that up to March 2022, with 97 million passengers. That figure would have been higher but for Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, which collapsed traffic in February and March and into Easter 2022. Since then, this summer we recovered strongly. In fact, we are leading Europe's recovery. We are the only major airline across Europe that has restored all of its pre-Covid-19 capacity and then some. We are on track to grow to 168 million passengers this year. Over the next four years, as set out in our submission, we expect to grow by another 60 million passengers a year. We want to put up to 25%, or 15 million, of that additional capacity in Ireland if the environmental and cost policies are favourable towards continuing to stimulate growth to and from peripheral EU member states such as Ireland.

That is where we need to focus Irish aviation policy.

Our concern about aviation policy is that it has not been upgraded since 2019. I know the committee is focusing on this and it is timely and opportune. However, it is remarkable that the current Government policy has not been updated. The last report is entitled the National Aviation Policy Second Progress Report, dated February 2019. It sets out clearly that Ireland's aviation policy is to enhance Ireland's connectivity by ensuring safe, secure and competitive access that is responsive to the needs of business, tourism and consumers. We find it quite shocking that the policy has not been updated since, particularly given the traumatic and existential crises that Irish aviation has suffered over the past three years. The policy has not been updated under the current Government, which took power in 2020. It is remarkable that the policy has not been updated to take account of the damage caused by Covid to Ireland's connectivity, the ongoing threat to Irish connectivity and Irish aviation from the illegal invasion of Ukraine or the likely impact of the current recession on air travel to and from Ireland. We are concerned that in that vacuum, or absence of an aviation policy, the Dublin Airport monopoly has returned to some of its bad habits. It currently proposes to waste €200 million building a tunnel under a taxi way that is absolutely unnecessary at Dublin Airport. No airline needs this and it certainly does not serve any customer. We are back to gold-plating or wasting expenditure here in order that the regulated charges at the airport can be inflated.

We need to take account of how Europe's environmental policy is damaging the connectivity of peripheral states. At Ryanair, we believe that all passengers should pay an environmental charge. Flying does indeed have a damaging impact on the environment but those charges must be fair and they should be balanced and fairly distributed across all airline passengers in Europe. Currently, they are not and I will show why.

The European air traffic system is a shambles. We saw that last summer. It accounts for about 90% of all Ryanair's flight delays and about 20% of our fuel consumption and emissions. The prize of getting some effective reform of European air traffic control, ATC, particularly for a peripheral country like Ireland, would be significant reduction in fuel costs and access prices for consumers, as well as a significant improvement in our reductions in emissions.

We are concerned that at the recent Sharm el-Sheikh conference, one of the solutions being proposed was to call for even more levies on aviation, which will damage the competitiveness and connectivity of Ireland and access cost to Ireland. While we accept that aviation must pay its fair share, aviation is not the cause of climate change or global warming. Aviation accounts for just over 2.8% of Europe's CO2 emissions. Marine transport accounts for over 5%. Yet we never hear people talking about this. When Sky News wants to show global warming, it is always an aircraft taking off and showing the contrails. It is never a ferry putting out of a harbour because one cannot see anything warming up. Aviation does have a damaging impact on our environment and must pay its fair share but it should not be asked to carry an unfair share. When it is asked to do so, peripheral nations such as Ireland get very badly damaged.

The slide on display is very interesting slide and I would like to explain it. It shows the airline emissions on the left-hand side. It is the airline emissions created by each of the major airline groups across Europe such as Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France, Ryanair, KLM etc. The blue element of the bar is the amount of those emissions where the passengers pay a carbon price or carbon tax. We can see that Ryanair and to a lesser extent EasyJet UK, stand out by having over 80% or 90% of our passengers pay an environmental tax or carbon price on their flights. The reason the other airlines do not is because of the extraordinary environmental tax exemptions that are being approved by Brussels, largely at the behest of lobbying from the major legacy airlines. The most polluting flights to and from Europe are long-haul flights. These account for 54% of Europe's aviation CO2 emissions but only deliver 6% of the passengers and they are exempt from any environmental taxation whatsoever. The richest people, the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese, flying long haul flights to and from Europe make no contribution whatsoever. The legacy airlines have very cleverly lobbied Brussels to also give them an exemption for transfer traffic. For example, the Vice-President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, is a great advocate for further environmental taxes on everything and maintains that the aviation industry should pay environmental taxes. However, the Dutch have many other alternatives if they want to move to and from Holland. The Dutch government has designed an environmental tax system in Holland which is penal but it exempts all the transfer traffic at Schiphol which currently accounts for 84% of KLM's traffic. Only 16% of KLM's traffic is point-to-point traffic at Schiphol. That is the percentage of traffic that pays the environmental taxes. They damage competition by saying Ryanair and EasyJet and the others that just fly point to point should pay all the taxes. It is fundamental to the competitiveness of the peripheral states that they begin to push back on this. We have had some success with the other European governments in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Malta, Cyprus and Greece in this regard. They accept the point that we are making. Poor Irish passengers or price-sensitive passengers, travelling to the peripheral countries of Europe pay an inequitable burden of environmental taxes. This is unfair when the richest people on long-haul flights or the people causing the most environmental damage, those taking two flights to get to their destination instead of one, are exempt. This needs to be challenged in Ireland's new aviation policy.

Ireland continues to lead short-haul travel in Europe. Ryanair is Europe's greenest and cleanest major airline, yet our passengers pay a disproportionate amount of environmental taxes. There is a myth perpetuated by some in the environmental lobby that the aviation industry does not pay a tax on fuel. It does not, mainly because it is flexible, it can pick up tax at different countries and they have not yet designed a way of taxing fuel. However, in 2019, Ryanair passengers paid €640 million of environmental taxes, airport passenger duty, APD, the emissions trading scheme, ETS, and all the others. That is equivalent to an environmental tax of €4.50 per passenger on an average fare of €40. Ryanair passengers are paying about 12% VAT, as it were, on our ticket prices in environmental taxes. We ask what happens to this money. We will deal with that as a separate issue. Europe's most polluting flights, that is, long-haul flights and transfer traffic, are entirely exempt. Short-haul peripheral airlines and our passengers pay 100% of Europe's environmental taxes. In the next five years, Ryanair is investing $22 billion in new aircraft. These aircraft offer us 4% more seats, 197 seats instead of 189, but they burn 16% less fuel and they reduce noise emissions by 40%. People ask what we are doing about the environment and the answer is that we are investing huge amounts of money to buy new-technology aircraft that are transformative in terms of reducing fuel consumption and noise emissions.

We have also set out the most ambitious environmental targets in Europe. We are committed to trying to get to 12.5% of our fuel being sustainable aviation fuel by 2030. We have already signed two sustainable aviation fuel, SAF, supply deals with Neste in Holland and OMV in Austria. We hope to sign another one with Shell tomorrow at an environmental conference we are hosting in Trinity College. We are committed to being net carbon neutral by 2050.

We are very concerned about what is happening to our environmental taxes. Ireland receives approximately €140 million in ETS revenues directly from our passengers, routed through them. Ireland commits that money will be spent on environmental measures and achieving climate reduction targets and I have enclosed some correspondence with the Department of Transport in this regard. More than 70% of this money is being squandered on the school bus fleet, which is neither environmentally friendly nor particularly fuel efficient. What we find remarkable is that it was spent on the school bus fleet during two years in 2019 and 2020 when fleet was not even operating. The schools were closed because of Covid. We fully accept that children have to get to school but that cost should come from the Department of Education and Skills budget. If the Department of Transport or the Irish Government is receiving these environmental tax revenues from Ryanair passengers we would ask that it be spent on environmental measures such as producing or procuring more sustainable aviation fuels at Irish airports or better still, helping us to subsidise the significant investments we are making in new technology aircraft.

We recently committed to spend more than $200 million over the next five years on split scimitar winglets that will reduce fuel consumption on our aircraft by 1.5%. In this market, where astonishing volumes of environmental revenues are being squandered on the school bus fleet or on unidentified climate finance projects, the Government is proposing new levies on short-haul passengers that will further damage Ireland and our competitiveness.

An aggressive and imaginative growth plan should be at the centre of a new aviation policy, not only for Irish aviation but also for the major airports. Recognising that Ireland is a peripheral location in Europe is central to that plan. We must be an efficient and low-cost attractive destination or we will not be able to compete. We will lose capacity and visitors. We need to drive down access costs to increase connectivity in tourism. That means we need lower cost, more efficient airports.

Airports should not necessarily reduce their existing charges but no money should be spent at an airport unless it allows the airport to offer lower charges for growth traffic, not just by Ryanair but also by the other airlines. If Dublin Airport wants to spend €200 million building a tunnel under a taxiway, it can do so but the cost should not finish up in the regulated asset base. We are calling for Dublin Airport to extend the existing pier D to have additional terminal facilities and the €200 million would be far better spent by the airport extending pier D on the north apron where the old hangars are. That is where the new runway is being built. Dublin Airport would earn more revenue from passengers and more retail revenue by extending there. Tunnels do not generate revenue for airports except in a regulated environment.

Ireland must be at the centre of demanding fair environmental taxes. Everyone in Europe should pay a fair share. Long-haul passengers who account for 50% of Europe's CO2 emissions should pay their fair share. They are rich enough to be able to pay. Short-haul passengers, especially those travelling to peripheral countries, should not be carrying all the burden. It is indefensible that transfer flights across expensive hub airports are exempt from environmental taxes. If people choose to take two flights to reach their destination, they should pay twice the environmental charge the short-haul direct passenger pays.

Ireland should be at the centre of calling for EU air traffic control, ATC, reform. Eamon Brennan, who has been running EUROCONTROL for the past five years with astonishing success, has been one of Ireland's great exports to Brussels. Sadly he is stepping down at the end of this year. He has done much to improve air traffic control systems across Europe but much more remains to be done. We compete with two other main aviation economies. There is one ATC system across the USA and the airlines do not even pay for it. It is paid for by the national Government. I forget the other one.

Despite having a single marketplace, we have to fly through 47 different ATC systems, zigzagging around so they can all get a little piece of the pie. The technology now exists to allow us to fly straight. We should be allowed to fly straight as we would burn less fuel, reduce our impact on the environment and pass on enormous savings to our customers. It is inexplicable. Europe should be protecting the free movement of people. When French ATC goes on strike, we have to cancel all overflights across France. The French Government uses minimum service legislation to protect local French domestic flights so the French are happily flying around but the poor Irish, Spanish, Italians and Germans take all the cancellations. When we apologise and explain flights are cancelled due to a French ATC strike, passengers think we are telling lies. The sun is shining out there. It is bizarre that the free movement of people across Europe in a single market is allowed to be threatened by the French every time they have these recreational strikes, which they have frequently in the summer.