Ms Mary Considine:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to present to members.

I would like to start by updating the committee on what we have achieved since the members visited us in May last year. The committee will be aware that the Shannon Airport Group plays a crucial role in the Irish aviation landscape. It is a driver for economic growth, both regionally and nationally, providing connectivity to support our growing foreign direct investment, FDI, and indigenous industries and, importantly, our tourism sector.

Last year, thanks to our staff, airline partners and loyal customers, we experienced a stronger recovery than anticipated as we rebuilt our business in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic. We welcomed more than 1.51 million passengers to Shannon last year, an 88% recovery on 2019 levels and up more than 300% on the prior year. UK and European services recovered strongly with more than 1.17 million passengers. After an absence of almost two years, our trans-Atlantic services returned last March. We saw a strong rebound on our daily services to New York, Boston and Newark.

Our priority for our passengers is to make our airports safe and secure while ensuring that their journey through is as hassle free as possible. We continue to see the positive impact from the introduction of our new, faster airport screening facility which halves the journey time through security. As a result, we have seen an increase in people from all over the country using Shannon Airport. They realise how easy it is to fly through Shannon. The prospects look bright for 2023. Our airline partners will operate 35 routes to 11 countries and we are delighted that we will have more routes this year than we did in 2019, with five new European destinations. Our trans-Atlantic services will be enhanced with the addition of Chicago from this May. These new services, combined with developments such as Ryanair's €10 million investment in its maintenance facility in Shannon and the delivery of our property investment strategy across the Shannon campus have cemented the upward trajectory for the group. We are also very proud that Shannon Airport and Ireland West became the first airports in the world to be recognized as age-friendly airports by the World Health Organization.

We are grateful, as many of our colleagues said, to Government for temporarily including Shannon Airport in the regional airports programme. The work we did with this funding demonstrates how important it is for Shannon to remain in the programme. As the committee has heard already this afternoon, under EU state aid rules, as an airport with under 3 million passengers, Shannon is clearly eligible to be permanently included in the programme. However, a policy change is required. I hope that the mid-term review of the programme, which is under way, will provide for this. Accessing this funding will ensure Shannon Airport can continue to invest in safety and security projects, decarbonise its operations and ultimately grow connectivity to deliver economic benefits for Ireland.

The national aviation policy 2015 predates the publication of Project Ireland 2040 which is Government's overarching strategy for the State. One of the key ambitions of this strategy is to facilitate 75% of growth outside the capital and deliver balanced development for the country. Aviation policy should seek to support further growth and connectivity into the regions and address the current imbalance in the aviation landscape. If we look at the population profile of the country almost 40% of the population are residing in the Munster-Connacht area and yet the five airports along the west coast only account for 15% of airport traffic.

Decarbonisation of the aviation industry is one of the greatest challenges we face in the years ahead and requires Governments and aviation businesses to work together. Rather than building new capacity, the focus should be first on utilising the existing capacity at airports in the State. This approach would be consistent with the overall premise of the circular economy by extracting more value from capacity already in place. I hope this will be factored into the committee's consideration of aviation policy. Alongside the upcoming BusConnects strategies, aviation policy should support enhancing direct, timely bus services to Shannon Airport from the cities of Limerick, Galway and Cork. The assessment of a new rail link to Shannon Airport already identified should also be prioritised and supported.

Finally, I want to mention the recent work of the Shannon Estuary economic task force on which I sit. It has highlighted the significant opportunity for the Shannon Estuary to be the lead location for Atlantic offshore wind. This abundant supply of green energy offers the potential to produce green hydrogen to develop sustainable aviation fuels, SAF. Producing SAF within the estuary creates an opportunity to decarbonise the aviation sector here. Aviation policy should support the development of SAF in the Shannon Estuary and ensure that any obstacles to delivering on this ambition are addressed as a priority. I hope the committee will reflect on the issues I have raised here in consideration of the policy in its future review.