Mr. Michael O'Leary:

I will answer each point individually. I could not agree more with the Senator on his opposition to the proposed acquisition of the Q-Park facility. It would be fundamentally wrong to allow the DAA to monopolise all the car parking at Dublin Airport. The Q-Park facility was a competitor as a lower-cost car parking service, although it was more remote from Dublin Airport. I think the competition authority was absolutely correct to reject the DAA's proposal to buy it. This is being used as a distraction by the DAA. If the DAA says that car parking is full, we would ask why it is not opening up some of its 300 acres of land for parking. I refer to the fields that it owns immediately around the environs of the airport. It had the winter to put in some 804 material and dust. It could be done in less than three months. One does not need planning permission for a temporary car park, and these would be temporary car parks. Dublin is at peak supply. When a delegation from the DAA comes back in here in a week or two, I urge the committee not to be distracted. It should not let Kenny Jacobs mention Q-Park. Instead, it should ask him why the DAA is not opening up or developing some of the fields for car parking around Dublin Airport. He will cite all sorts of reasons, including health and safety. People just want the right to park their car in June, July and August without getting scalped. He is charging more for car parking than we charge in air fares to get people to London.

I have no issue with the creation of a spur train line. Heathrow Airport is serviced by the Heathrow Express and the underground. Less than 15% of passengers who go to and from Heathrow Airport use the train. Most passengers travel by bus or drive. The problem with all these train solutions at airports is that people taking flights in the early morning or late evening generally travel from their home to the airport. It is not convenient for them to drive to Connolly Station, Heuston Station, Busáras, St. Stephen's Green or wherever. People are not going to drive into the centre of town at 4.30 a.m. or 5 a.m. to get public transport to get to the airport and do the same on the way back. We all know that if we are going to the airport for an early-morning or late-evening flight, it is our natural instinct to drive there and park in whatever car park is available. That is what people will do because it is most convenient for them. Approximately 90% of people going to and from the airport are coming from their homes. The inbound passengers, who are the visitors, are very well served. We are incredibly fortunate that whoever designed Dublin Airport in 1939 chose the location at Collinstown because it is only 9 km from the city centre. It is very well served by buses. The capacity of the bus services is massively underestimated. In 2017, when the planning restriction was put in place, bus services accounted for 5% of Dublin Airport's traffic. Today, buses deliver between 25% and 30% of its traffic, mainly huge volumes of inbound traffic. It is not buses going to the centre. There are buses from Dublin Airport to Mullingar, Kinnegad and Knock Airport. Buses are the way we solve this problem without wasting billions of euro on a metro solution. Again, I have no issue with a metro or a train if it is just for commuters going to and from Whitehall, Drumcondra, Swords or Rush, where huge numbers of my employees live. That is fine but it does not solve Dublin Airport. Dublin Airport gets solved by having more car parking capacity to keep the cost of car parking reasonable, and more buses. The airport is very well served by buses.

On health and safety, when Kenny Jacobs starts talking to the committee in two weeks' time about the health and safety of parcels - he will say there is a need to spend €250 million so that the parcels will be healthier and safer going around Dublin Airport - members should ask him why the cargo airlines are not paying €250 million. What they are doing is gaming the regulatory system, as they have always done, and saying we need to spend €250 million building a four-lane tunnel to get to the other side of a taxiway that one can drive across. None of the airlines support this. All of the airlines, including Aer Lingus, Ryanair and everybody else, are completely opposed to the proposal. The problem is that Kenny Jacobs wants to spend €250 million because the regulator will allow him to increase passenger charges at Dublin Airport to pay for a tunnel to ensure that the parcels are healthier and safer. Frankly, and people can criticise me for saying so, but I do not care much about the parcels. The parcels are not time sensitive or subject to anything. One or two might fall off the back of a truck but no one is going to get injured. The parcels can either be driven across the taxiway or go around the airport, which is what they do at the moment and none of this is time sensitive.