Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is time sensitive. Most airlines have launched and announced their summer 2023 schedule. They are starting to sell flights. If this is to happen and the Government really has Shannon's back, the decision needs to move off the Minister of State's desk and over to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to green light it. If it is not to happen, given that Schiphol Airport faces a similar reality with environmental restrictions on how many flights can land there, a plan B needs to be formulated and worked on quickly.

The real element we want to see in the new national aviation policy is some degree of support and protection for the other airports outside the capital. I do not like using the term "regional". Our local airport in Shannon is an international one. We have had bad days in that airport. The loss of the slots at Heathrow Airport in 2007 was the low point, and the airport was certainly let down then. We want the airport to know that the Government will have its back and that certain initiatives in the new national aviation policy will allow for some degree of recalibration. Having up to 90% of all air traffic going in and out of Dublin Airport is wrong from the perspective of balanced regional development. To speak to something close to the heart of the Minister, it is also environmentally unsustainable to have so many aircraft being funnelled through one airport. We met the Ministers' counterparts in the Netherlands and they have started to view aviation through that lens. Will the Minister consider imposing a cap of sorts on the number of aircraft taking off from and landing at Dublin Airport in a calendar year and having a more regional spread of everything that happens elsewhere in Ireland?