Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I agree it is a balancing act. The objective always is to ensure that passengers' rights are respected. However, one must be careful not to go too far with any of these regulations because there is a danger that business will suffer. One does not want to put companies out of business. I need to study the regulation more. I have been talking to people who are frequent travellers and they advise me that their primary concern is to have care and assistance if they miss a connection or a flight. They want the airlines to pull out all the stops to get them to their destination as quickly as possible and to treat them with a bit of respect and dignity while that is happening. I do not meet many people who want a couple of hundred euro in cash; they just want to complete their journey as quickly as possible. It may a different case if one misses a day of a holiday but, by and large, those who are delayed for four or five hours are not looking for a cheque as compensation.

They are looking for the airline to make a genuine effort to get them to the destination as soon as possible and treat them well in the process. That should be our focus, as that is what I believe passengers want; I may be wrong about that but I am interested in the committee's views.

On the maritime side, it is still early days and we are still trying to work out a mechanism to calculate emissions to allow controls in the future. There is a different piece of legislation which has only just been started - I cannot remember if it is a directive or regulation - which deals with clean power. It will consider everything from electric vehicles to clean power in ports, and it could potentially provide European funding for the establishment of natural gas facilities in ports which could be used to fuel ships. I have been told it is a clean fuels directive and I am very keen on it, although many people feel it is overly ambitious. It provides a good vision of the future.