Mr. Joe Hamill:

To go back, briefly, the overall context in the early 2000s and perhaps even the late 1990s is that there was a move at the time to look more at non-Gaeltacht islands. The Department in subsequent formations had paid more attention to the Gaeltacht islands but perhaps less so to non-Gaeltacht islands. A report was done in the mid-1990s to examine island development as a whole and it became part of Government policy at the time to consider the development of island communities generally both inside and outside the Gaeltacht. That was part of the background.

A study was commissioned from Cranfield University in 2001 or 2002 to look at air services for islands. That emerged from the fact that there had been a long-standing air service to the three Aran Islands for some years, which had been developed by Údarás na Gaeltachta as part of its services in the Gaeltacht.