Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 28 July 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Covid-19: Impact on Aviation

Ms Mary Considine:

The Deputy has covered a number of issues there. First and foremost, we operate an up to category nine airport. Having said that, we do not, at all times of the day, have aircraft which require that level of cover. As such, if we do not have aircraft coming in which require the higher level of cover we operate to category seven and we notify accordingly. We then man up to category nine. As I said at the outset, we had to take very difficult measures when the pandemic hit us in March. We initially restricted our hours of operation. We came back up to 24-hour operation on 1 July with the restoration of terminal services. We have cover in the fire station 24 hours a day, seven days a week at the moment.

We have had to put in temporary measures to reduce pay and that would not be different to businesses all over the country. Those temporary measures are very important in ensuring the longer-term sustainability of the business, because as I have said we need to focus very much on survival and recovery and what needs to be done to ensure we have a business as we come through to the other end of this pandemic.