Mr. Michael O'Leary:

I touched briefly on this the other day but we have to be very careful here as an island on the periphery of Europe. Under our plan, we grow traffic at Cork to 3.4 million passengers and Shannon gets to 2 million. The latter figure is the benchmark for being a sustainable international airport. At 2 million passengers, you have sufficient services, retail etc. to be sustainable. Anything below 2 million and you are really struggling. I would not underestimate the challenge of getting Shannon to 2 million or Cork to 3.4 million. We have to be very careful. This was something that happened a lot during the baggage crisis or the staffing crisis at Dublin Airport. People asked why we did not just tell the airlines to go to Cork. Some 60% of our inbound passengers want to fly to Dublin. Dublin is the draw here. If we get them into Dublin many will drive around the island but we cannot tell half the English people - we tried that for years and it was called the Shannon stopover. It was the greatest crime against aviation in this country but it was for regional development reasons. If people want to come to Dublin then let them get to Dublin. Many of them will drive around.

We have some significant success at the moment opening new routes to and from Cork and to and from Shannon. Cork and Shannon are beginning to assert themselves and grow as destinations in their own right and they are attractive destinations in their own right. As for trying to artificially move people out of Dublin if Dublin is where they want to go, we should get them onto the island first. We must make the island in general more attractive, that is, make it more competitive. We should implement policy, as Senator Horkan said. The state of the current policy is fine; it is just nobody is implementing it. We are not focusing on competitiveness. In fact, we have Ministers talking about being less competitive by taxing ourselves even more at a time when we are trying to attract more people here. We have to be careful with Dublin's dominance. It is dominant but we are better off to have a very successful Dublin and out of that grow a successful Cork and Shannon. Limerick is having a great run at the hurling at the moment but should we limit hurling or should Dublin GAA be broken into two because the teams won six all-Irelands? The answer is "No" because the others have to come up and learn to compete. Competing is how you go forward.

I recognise the Deputy's contribution. He was one of the more forward-looking Ministers with responsibility for transport. It was many years ago, but he did a great job. In the last 30 years there have not been many Ministers with responsibility for transport who I am willing to compliment, but the Deputy is one of them.