Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister and his officials. I know he has been in the job several months now, but this is his first time before this committee and I wish him the very best of luck in his role. He is the right man for the right job, and we wish him every success. He has already been cutting ribbons in County Clare, so I am delighted to have him in this role.

I will talk first about Dublin Airport and its dominant position in aviation in terms of inbound and outbound flights. It has an 84% market share at the moment. I get the point, and I do not think there is any political dissent among Government leadership or Opposition leadership, about the airport cap, An Bord Pleanála and all that. I will leave that on the shelf. What I am talking about is that Project Ireland 2040 set out many regional development goals on balanced regional development. It dealt with the realms of balanced housing, balanced healthcare, the road network, the rail network - it spoke about all those headings. One heading it has not addressed, however, and it is blind to this point, is aviation. Aviation also needs to be better regionally balanced. No one is saying we will flip-end the 84% market share Dublin has and suddenly start seeing it in Shannon, Cork and Knock. That is not realistic. It will not happen. However, there needs to be some statement in Project Ireland 2040 that relates to balanced aviation.

If I may speak more to this point, when any airline at the moment wants to fly in and out of Dublin, it applies to the Irish Aviation Authority for a landing slot. The Irish Aviation Authority examines that application through a one-dimensional lens: it either approves it or rejects it. If, however, we had a regional development lens added to this, it would then have to say to the likes of KLM, Aer Lingus and Delta, "We have 12 services per day from Dublin to Amsterdam. Maybe one of those should go from another region." If we were to add that criterion, it would not dismantle anything Dublin has. It would allow it to have its dominant position, being the national airport in the capital city. It would not take from that but would allow some flights to go out to the regions. I was misrepresented on this by Dublin Airport Authority. It said I was trying to bring back the Shannon stopover - ludicrous. I had strong words for the authority, but I will leave that there. Putting in this criterion would allow everything in Dublin to remain as is but would siphon off a certain number of flights per day, per week, per month and across the year to the other regions. Will the Minister comment on that, please?