Mr. Niall MacCarthy:

We have nine scheduled airlines and this summer, we will have 40-something scheduled routes with some charter routes. It is all about both the airport charges and the demand. Airlines will not put on a route that does not have core demand. They are there to make money, so it is about bums on seats. The second conversation relates to how much to charge. For small, regional airports on the periphery of Europe, which is where we are, they want low cost. All the growth we have seen in Ireland has been in the transatlantic sector and the low-cost sector. Aer Lingus, for its own reasons, is not growing in Ireland Inc. It is growing in transatlantic services but not in mainland Europe. As a regional airport, we have not raised our airport charges in 20 years, even though inflation and energy and labour costs have increased sharply in that period. We would shrink in growth terms if we were to raise our charges significantly. That is a challenge as a regional airport. Ours is a successful regional airport, but we are saying to the Government it should be careful.

There is an artificial limit of 1 million passengers per annum. The EU allows 3 million passengers per annum. The Government will want to invest in good business cases for growth in Ireland's regional airports, so I would say strongly to Government to align with the EU limit at 3 million passengers to enable us to continue to grow. We will have nine scheduled airlines and maybe 44 routes and we do have a lot of hub services. We have Amsterdam, Heathrow, Frankfurt and Paris with two airlines this summer, including Vueling. Regional airports are tricky to operate. There are a lot of moving parts, safety and security and then doing a deal with an airline to grow.