Mr. Michael O'Leary:

We are not in a position in this country to do so. I would not drive Airbnb out of the marketplace. We need accommodation from all sources. I would encourage the Government to encourage Airbnb as best it can. There are many spare bedrooms in many houses all over the country that could be converted into Airbnb accommodation pretty quickly if we could use the technology. We are short of accommodation.

Our population has risen to 5 million and will be 6 million in the next ten years. Then it will rise to 8 million. None of the solutions we are talking about now, such as fiddling around with the tax system, has ever worked. We need large-scale, high-rise apartment developments, certainly in Dublin, and we need them as soon as possible. Whatever the Government has to do to deliver them, it should do. It should certainly start off by fixing the traffic system around Dublin and ensuring the job of Dublin city managers is not building swimming facilities at Custom House Dock but putting up 40- and 50-storey tower blocks of apartments. Of all the cities I fly to around Europe, Dublin is the only one to which I arrive that does not have them. We are told everyone wants a family home. Large numbers of our employees under 30 do not want a family home. They are not looking for four-bedroom houses with front and back gardens. They want apartments in the centre of town where they can enjoy their leisure time. This fixes the transport issue in the city. The ludicrous system we have whereby we are afraid to go up in Dublin, one of the fastest-growing capital cities in Europe, is absurd. To me, going up is the obvious solution; it is not building more houses in Kildare, Westmeath, or Drogheda.

We have to go up in the centre of this town and we have to do so now. The Government should have a crisis team working on it.