Mr. Rory O'Connor:

I will speak from the Irish Air Corps' perspective, as I would not be fully up to speed on the civilian side of the house. We now have an air traffic control cadet scheme in place, and there is a minimum level of qualifications. I do not have them in front of me here. With all of these specialisations, it is the additional testing we do, such as psychometric or FEAST testing, as it is called in the case of the ATC, that determines to what extent someone is going to pass the training in that regard. They do a period of training at the cadet school in the Curragh. They will go away then to do their phase 1 training, which is an external school. It is about seven months away in Spain. At the moment, we have some cadets down there. They will come back then and do about a year of on-the-job training to issue a tower rating. We currently have three individuals due back this month. They will finish their training around this time next year, and they will be commissioned as officers in air traffic control. That is what we call the basic tower, which is that visual piece around an airfield.

At some point after that they will go on a radar course, and that will allow them to operate radar and guide aircraft in bad weather. Then, with regard to capabilities, you have a controller who is able to do the tower and the radar and, from our point of view, is able to do that supervisory piece. Those individuals undergo annual medical requirements and regular refresher training. The fact that you are employed in that role means you are keeping current with regard to it. If somebody steps away for various reasons, they have to go through a period of revalidation and recertification before they are able to go back into the tower and operate that. We work quite closely with our civil colleagues on that as well because there is a lot of civil-military co-ordination required there.