Mr. Declan Fitzpatrick:

I will give a broad context to how we would assess a risk like a new wind farm, for example. Going back to what I said earlier about effective regulation, the aerodromes and the air navigation service providers such as AirNav Ireland must have a safety management system. A key element of a safety management system is a hazard assessment system and how they go about risk mitigation. When they see, for example, a new infrastructure development in the vicinity of one of their installations or of an airport, they will assess, through the risk assessment, what the impact of that hazard is, how it will impact and what the key mitigating measures are which we can take to reduce the risk from that new infrastructure.

Obviously before the thing is built, one of the most effective mitigating measures is to say that we do not want it built. That will prevent any risk arising from new infrastructure. If the facility was given planning permission, for example, they would have to look at the other mitigating measures. Woodcock Hill is important infrastructure but there is redundancy in the system. For example, AirNav Ireland might determine that there are other ways to ensure the same level of safety. It might be a software update to the system. It could be a whole new radar head, which would be very costly and ineffective. A process has to be gone through to determine what the safety impact would be. That process is happening.