Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

A few months ago, Michael O’Leary from Ryanair was before the committee. He bemoaned how environmental taxes were being levied more on passengers on short-haul flights. It suits the long-haul carriers, bigger airlines such as KLM, which go from hub airport to hub airport, while passengers on airlines such as Ryanair and Aer Lingus are penalised more by comparison. Strictly speaking, this does not come under the Minister of State’s Department and there are a number of competing issues. There is an environmental argument and there is the taxation treatment of aviation more generally, but I appeal to the Minister of State with responsibility for aviation to be our last line of defence, knowing we are an island nation and we will need aeroplanes to get in and out of continental Europe and go transatlantic. We have to embrace where we are going environmentally, and I think everyone wants to be on that path together, but surely when we are talking about the environmental taxation of aviation, Ireland would not be treated any worse than any other country in terms of where we are as an island.