Mr. Michael O'Leary:

That has been the case every Christmas. The question is whether we add 270,000 extra seats. I do not want these passengers to bleed to anywhere else. I do not want them going on boats. We add a very significant amount of seat capacity for a 20-day period over Christmas and the new year and, without that, the fares would be materially higher. We are facing a situation this Christmas where the fares are going to be materially higher because we are going to have 270,000 fewer seats. We will allocate those seats elsewhere. We will be adding extra in Madrid and Rome. The seats will go elsewhere. We will probably add some extra seats into Belfast but we only have two aircraft based there so there is a limit. We are not using an economic weapon. People need to understand the consequences. Deputy Farrell rightly said that these three or four aircraft are not really lost to Dublin because it never had them. That is true, although it would have if we did not have the cap this year. During the October school mid-term break and Christmas, people will really begin to see and feel the impact of this cap at Dublin Airport on pricing, particularly at peak periods and weekends when we cannot add extra capacity.