Mr. Eddie Wilson:

I will answer that question in two ways. The first issue is that we are not here to look for state aid. We were very grateful for the wage subsidy at the very start of this process. Now that our people are gradually coming back to work that has become less and less as only 8% of our people are here in Ireland. We are a multinational company. The state aid which we refer to in Europe is illegal state aid.

Lufthansa has received €11 billion. That includes an extra €2 billion since I submitted the document because the Belgian Government stumped up €2 billion for this private company. We want to see what is happening.

Ireland has two private airlines that we take for granted and that are world class in what they do. The Government policy at the moment is to push the airlines away. It is approximately 8% of our market. We are not here looking for state aid. We are looking for incentives to preserve the traffic that exists and grow it next year. Traffic in Europe is facing an apocalypse over the next three or four years and we are going to be left on the sidelines if we do not get moving. Spain and Portugal have put incentives in place. Airlines make decisions around those incentives and allocate resources accordingly. The two Irish airlines, Aer Lingus and Ryanair, are telling the Government that they are not open for business. We need to get on top of that. The incentives for which we are looking will benefit the economy. We are not looking for a bailout or state aid.