Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There was talk earlier about regional development and the counterbalance to Dublin, especially now with Cork Airport, Kerry Airport, Shannon Airport, Knock airport and right up to Donegal. I flew out of Dublin last year.

Mother to God, the number of people there. I live 30 minutes from Cork Airport and I have to travel out of Dublin. We have Knock. I flew out of Shannon a few times. The capacity that is available in the regional airports which is not being used needs to be looked at. This is not looking to take from Dublin, because Dublin is saturated. In fact, people in Dublin would be delighted to see flights go to the regional airports. If we are looking at regional development when we are bringing tourists and business in, we must have connectivity. The problem here is that our public transport infrastructure is not up to a standard which allows us to provide connectivity to flights.

In some parts of Europe, including Germany, France and other European countries which have a very good integrated network of public transport, you could see that there would be less of a need for these short flights. You can fly to Manchester or London in an hour, but you cannot get to Dublin or Belfast from Cork or Shannon. To me, supporting the regional airports needs to be considered at a national level and at a government level. That is work that needs to be done.

One other point I have to ask about is the old terminal in Cork that is just lying empty. The new terminal is great but surely we should be trying to open the old terminal and increase the volume of flights into Cork. It is a sin to leave a terminal lying empty for years.