Mr. Michael O'Leary:

There should not be. The cap should be on facilities. The DAA got planning permission for two runways. They have two terminal buildings. They could improve the terminal buildings. That is where we believe the money should be spent. You are absolutely right, a Leas-Chathaoirligh. We are calling for a scrapping of the cap, not some planning process. The planning process was addressed when the second runway got permission to be built because that took capacity up to 60 million passengers. The DAA again mismanaged the process. I do not know why the DAA never applied. The DAA has been through numerous management changes in the past ten or 15 years. We will go back into the Department of Transport and the Department will rubber-stamp whatever it would be, and the situation has fundamentally changed. Planning is a much more difficult issue here. There has been at various stages of the past decade, though, talk about our passing legislation for strategically important assets. Dublin Airport is a strategically important asset. The LNG terminal in Shannon was strategically important. Should we have a small nuclear power plant on the island of Ireland? It would be strategically important, given that we have no energy independence at all. We do need, as a country, going forward, a process whereby, whatever the Government of the day decides will be a strategically important investment, planning is bypassed or at least fast-tracked.

What should the DAA be doing? The problem with the DAA is that it has planning permission at the moment for a tunnel of €250 million but it is about four years away from planning permission to lift the traffic cap. What it should be doing is fixing the car parks. When Kenny Jacobs is in here next week, or whenever he is in here, members should say to him, "You have been sitting there for a year-----