Mr. Michael O'Leary:

It is not a runway. It is a taxiway. It is a closed runway. I will refer the Senator to the picture. The old runway has now been closed and is now just a taxiway. They do this in many European airports. Cologne-Bonn Airport, which is one of Germany's bigger airports, put down railway gates and traffic lights on both sides. If an aircraft is using the taxiway and the traffic cannot drive across, after the aircraft goes through the railway gates come down and off you go. Such a project would cost less than €1 million and save passengers, consumers and visitors from paying the €250 million that Kenny Jacobs wants to inflate the airport charges by.

Last, I am happy to say that there is no pilot shortage. Every three or four years the pilot unions put out a general report that there is a worldwide shortage of pilots. There has never been a shortage of people who earn what pilots earn, to which they are entitled as it is a very skilled profession. We train about 1,000 cadets every year. At present, we are spending €50 million on the construction of a pilot training centre in Madrid, and another one in Kraków in Poland to take our annual capacity for pilots. We will produce 1,500 cadets every year. We need between 700 and 800 cadets for our own resources so we are training more trainee pilots than we need. We already have a large pilot training school in Swords, County Dublin. We have spent about €25 million on the school, which is close to Dublin Airport. The school has six state-of-the-art simulators and produces 250 or 300 pilot cadets every year. Pilots are members of a very skilled profession but they are very well paid and have very good working conditions. By law, a pilot cannot fly more than 900 hours a year, which is an average of 18 hours a week over a 50-week or 48-week year. I do not begrudge what pilots earn. It is a particularly easy job on a sunny day when there are no clouds but they earn every cent of their corn when landing in cross-winds or thunderstorms, as we have had all over Europe, or in low-visibility conditions. I am pleased to say that there is no pilot shortage in Ryanair. We are essentially going to be the only big 737 operator in Europe and we are training more pilots than we will need for ourselves.