Mr. Kenny Jacobs:

In a nutshell, I would like to do both. Aviation has to do its part to reduce carbon globally and in Ireland, and that is the wider aviation industry, including airports, fuel providers, airlines and lessors. Everyone has to be involved in the landscape. Ireland is different. We are an island. Any time I go to Brussels, it is clear there is a demand-management approach in continental Europe whereby people decide to take the train instead of domestic flights, such as from Amsterdam to Nice. That is a great option for someone who lives in Amsterdam, but we are not able to do that from Dublin, Cork or Shannon. As an island nation on the periphery of Europe, we have to have the right strategy for Ireland. Ours is a very open economy and we have to find a way that will allow us to get the right balance between both.

Aviation, in general, should have done more work ten years ago to explain how it operates. An airport could grow in size but have higher carbon outputs. It depends on where the flights are going, the types of aircraft, the load factors and so forth. There is a way to grow as an aviation system, using newer aircraft with higher load factors, that allows an airport to stabilise, maintain and shrink over time the CO2 per passenger-kilometre. This is the bit that aviation has been figuring out and needs to continue to figure out.

As for whether we are avaricious in respect of just growth, I do not think we are. Every month now, we publish our traffic statistics, and we will publish our monthly sustainability performance. We are proud of the fact we have reduced our energy consumption at both Cork and Dublin by just shy of 20% in the past half-year. They are the types of metrics I think an airport needs to start talking about such that, as well as giving passengers choice as to where they can fly and the number of people who can travel, we show what we are doing to reduce our own carbon use and support the wider aviation system to reduce the CO2 output.

This is a big discussion in Ireland because, as I said earlier, it is important for people to realise Dublin Airport is capped at 32 million passengers. If we keep it capped at that in 2023 and the population grows as we approach 2030, when Ireland is just shy of 6 million people, that implies we will all be flying 25% less often.

Therefore, if we just want to do the amount of flying we do today, and as the population increases, Dublin Airport will need to grow. We also want to look beyond that because good infrastructure planning means taking a longer-term view. That is what we do as a big infrastructure business but it is a national conversation. How do we strike the right balance as a periphery nation? We love to travel. We also love to welcome the diaspora back. Also, you will never be able to take the train from Dublin to Nice, so we have to get the balance right. I am thinking of a wider aviation approach, with newer aircraft, sustainable aviation fuel and airports doing what they can do to support and do their part within that ecosystem. Then we make the choices we need to make in and around national policy as to what we want to see happen. Plenty of people are choosing to fly less; many other people want to fly more. However, just to keep pace with population growth, Dublin Airport will have to grow.