Mr. Kenny Jacobs:

There are a number of issues raised there by the Deputy. On the tunnel, which we have talked about briefly, I will ask Mr. Harrison to speak more on that in a moment. If the regulator wants us to do the tunnel from a safety point of view, that is very important. The tunnel is part of a €1.9 billion capital investment programme over the next number of years, so I do not want it to become something that is a be-all and end-all issue. It is part of a big programme which we have. We are good at infrastructure. Airlines are good at buying aircraft and fuel at the right time. We are good at doing infrastructure. The north runway is a very good example of good forward planning in Ireland and as to how it is done. It came in ahead of time and under budget. In respect of the tunnel, the regulator wants us to do it for safety reasons and we have customers who want us to do it because it will improve efficiency at the airport for cargo operators and for commercial airlines operating there. We wish to go ahead and do the tunnel at the right time because we believe it is required and Mr. Harrison can add a little more on that issue.

I will speak now on T1 and on Cork. Cork is great. When I worked on the airline side, it did not have the growth it has at present. It has a good deal of growth at the moment. I was there last week and it is fantastic. The only thing that goes wrong in Cork is the wind, which Mr. Niall MacCarthy and the team cannot control. It is a very efficient airport. Everything works well and everybody there is happy. I am happy because I am from Cork and I love getting messages from friends and family saying that Cork Airport was a dream today. For business travel, for families heading away; Ryanair have added Valencia, Seville and La Rochelle as great destinations, particularly for the summer season. That is fantastic. Long may that continue in Cork and that the wind does not become a problem on any given day.

On T1, I want it to be better. I was probably its most frequent customer for five years of my life and, trust me, I have a long list of things to do, including stuff to take down, decluttering and specific toilets which I want to have fixed. There is an infrastructure bit but I am not in any way giving anybody a kick-to-touch answer that infrastructure will solve and make T1 better. What makes T1 better is the management team going up there every day, like it is a big shop. For me, every airport should be a fast and friendly flight factory. I do not mind using that language because it is about getting through, efficiency at security, and that it takes less than 20 minutes. Ultimately, in a few years’ time, I would love to change that 20 minutes target downward. I would like every single toilet to be clean and to never have issues with the toilets. One should be able to get a coffee or a drink, whatever one wants, and be able to get a seat. It is that daily grind of running a big operation. T1 is compromised because it is a very old building. It is never going to look like an airport one would see in other parts of the world, it is the terminal which Ryanair operates out of and it wants to grow. Our job is to work with that airline so that it continues to grow but that we make it a friendly and fast customer experience, with all of the difficulties around that. I think we know and are getting on with fixing that.

We took down the tents and the barriers associated with the queues last summer. We did not need them over the course of the summer but they were a visual reminder, so we took those away at the weekend. Staff were very happy with that.

We also took down all of the Covid-19 signage because you did not need to see that coming back through immigration. These were things we had worked on already. We have changed our toilet supplier. This is boring stuff.