Mr. Michael O'Leary:

We slightly covered this in some of the previous answers but I am happy to set it out again.

We submitted a growth plan to the transport Minister on 7 March. It would commit us to growing our traffic on the island of Ireland from 20 million to 30 million passengers over the next six years, out to 2030. We have the aircraft ordered that would be able to facilitate that. As part of that, Dublin would grow from 16 million to about 20 million passengers, representing about 20% growth. Cork would grow from about 2 million passengers to 4.5 million, which is more than 100% growth. Shannon would grow from 1.3 million to 3 million, which is also more than 100% growth. The number of aircraft based in Cork would grow from three to seven while the number in Shannon would grow from three to six. The difficulty is that none of that growth is possible unless we can also deliver growth in Dublin. Between 60% and 65% of our traffic in Dublin is inbound; it is visitors coming to this country. In terms of competition, it is not about people who are sitting abroad and asking if they will go to Dublin, Cork or Shannon for their stag or hen party but whether they will go to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Kaunas, Vilnius, Tallinn or Prague. The competition is not between Dublin, Cork and Shannon. It is about getting them onto the island of Ireland or losing them to Scotland, the Baltic states or some other exciting destination in central or eastern Europe.

We believe that we can continue to grow dramatically in Dublin and we know that of that 65% of inbound passengers, 10% to 20% of them will travel outside of Dublin. They will go around the country playing golf and visiting the Wild Atlantic Way, which has been an incredibly successful development. I like to think it was pioneered by a Ryanair executive when he was chairman of Fáilte Ireland. As long as we can get more people on the island we can build outbound traffic. People can come into Dublin and leave from Cork or Shannon. We might also be able to bring new routes into Cork and Shannon and people could leave again out of Dublin. We need to have growth in the overall architecture. It is not a question of not growing in Dublin and just moving passengers to Cork and Shannon because 65% do not want to go to either Cork or Shannon. We can encourage more of them to use Cork and Shannon but only if we can get them into Dublin first. If we do not and if we cap Dublin Airport, there is a problem. As Jason McGuinness said earlier, we had three aircraft planned to go into Dublin this summer and 16 new routes planned. All of those aircraft and those routes have now gone to southern Italy and Poland, for no reason other than the IAA would not give us additional slots to operate and to base those aircraft here. We want to base more aircraft in Dublin, Cork and Shannon. We think Ireland can continue to grow on an all-island basis but we cannot do that unless we can have growth at Dublin Airport as well. Disappointingly, we made that submission to the transport Minister on 7 March but we still have not had a reply from him, two and a half months later.