Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and congratulate Mr. Jacobs on his appointment. It is great to have the role filled.

There are a couple of areas I want to touch and expand on. On the capital investment side, for those of us who are more familiar with Dublin Airport and have been given detailed briefings, we know how important this capital infrastructure is and we know it needs to be funded. It is all very unsexy stuff but it is the reality in terms of delivering a top-class international airport. We had a committee meeting before Christmas with Michael O'Leary and Eddie Wilson from Ryanair. It was a very entertaining meeting, full of colour, and, in particular, Mr. O’Leary was absolutely lashing the tunnel out of it, so to speak. However, we heard as a committee today how succinctly and clearly it has been communicated by the DAA why it is important. It is a condition of the regulator and it is about safety. No one wants to spend €200 million on a tunnel for no reason. There is no vanity in it. It is something that needs to be provided and needs to be funded accordingly. It does not look as attractive as a €9.99 flight to X, Y or Z on an ad, but it is very important because those flights cannot happen unless we have a safe airport that is well funded and strategically funded.

I will come back on the Commission for Aviation Regulation, CAR, pricing decision. I first want to talk about the flight deviations, without going over too much of the ground that has been covered already. We have residents from St. Margaret's, the Ward, Ballyboughal, Rolestown and Killsallaghan who are up in arms over what has happened in recent months and will continue to happen until at least 26 February. There is a request from those residents to address the committee, and I think we should allow that. There is a precedent for that from 2003 and, as a committee, we probably do not hear from impacted citizens enough on whatever the issue may be. That is something we should respond to in a positive way.

On the flight deviations, when did the DAA find out or notice that these flights were going to deviate in such a way? Was it the morning of the first flights out that they went in that right-hand direction across those areas or did the DAA have a week’s notice or a month’s notice? When did the DAA know the flights were going to take that deviation?