Mr. Michael O'Leary:

That is a good question. The peripheral countries, particularly the tourism countries and the islands - Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Italy - are growing increasingly concerned at the way environmental taxation is being used. It is largely proposed by the Belgians, Dutch, Germans and French, all of whom have alternatives, to penalise short-haul. There is a growing sense that this needs to be pushed back. The Italian and Spanish ministers have said they will block any further increase in environmental taxation on air travel. We see nothing similar coming from the Irish Government. This should be at the heart of Government aviation policy. Two meetings of peripheral transport ministers have been held over the past six months and Ireland did not even attend. Ireland attended one transport meeting and made no contribution. We are an island on the periphery of Europe. The UK has left the European Union. In some senses, that is not good for us and weakens the European Union. We have to explain and put forward our position. We do not have alternatives to get on and off our island and our tourism industry and the tourism industries of Portugal, Greece, Malta and Cyprus are fundamentally dependent on having very competitive, low access costs. What do we want our Government to do? We want our Minister for Transport to lobby strongly for a policy in Europe that European environmental taxes must be applied to all flights and should be applied fairly to all flights. That is an unarguable case.