Mr. Michael O'Leary:

No, but there is a particular problem with the German market. It is the least recovered market post Covid. While Ireland has already fully recovered its pre-Covid traffic, Germany is only operating at 80% of its pre-Covid traffic. While emerging from Covid, Lufthansa closed down some of its own airlines, eliminating some of the competition. The German Government has doubled ATC fees in Germany, making them the most expensive in Europe, and the German airports have a legislative framework that does not allow them to discount for new route growth, so they have to apply the same published charges. Having the same published charges will not deliver growth and means we cannot afford new routes from Germany to the west that would be marginal at best. We fly from Frankfurt-Hahn to Shannon and I think we have one from Germany into Kerry as well during the peak summer months, so there is access, but it is high cost and loss making because of the high cost of infrastructure in Germany at the moment.