Mr. Cathal Guiomard:

Mr. O'Leary's correspondence is very explicit, particularly in his first letter which asserts that we do not have any work to do and asks why our staff are required. In his summing up of the minor functions, as he sees them, that the commission has to carry out, he claims there was no airport price regulatory work required in the year he was examining, even though Ryanair had itself taken a High Court judicial review about airport charges which had consequences for us in preparing materials to defend the case in question. He also stated he had asked the Minister for Transport to establish a review body to look at the airport charges. We were also engaged with this during the year in question. Ryanair had itself, therefore, given rise to work in the airport regulatory side which we were required to do and which is omitted from the letter. The whole air passenger rights function is also omitted.

In the correspondence I sent in reply to that letter, I elaborated on what was the work of the office. If we are to maintain a small team of people to do the licence renewal in the travel trade area, be familiar with what are the entitlements of member of the public in passenger complaints and do the price regulatory functions on airport charges and some of the intervening work, we need the numbers of staff we currently have.