Mr. Michael O'Leary:

No. Baldonnel does not have the capacity. It is a shortish runway and the airport does not have many facilities.

In any case, it will not ultimately provide a solution. Tony Ryan, back in the day, had the idea that we would build and grow at Baldonnel but it was never really a viable solution. Certainly, our airforce would be better off, and the Government would be as well. The situation is a disgrace but I understand the political realities. The Government should have two or three private jets. It is a disgrace that when the Taoiseach and Ministers go to European summits and so on, they are not arriving there on some kind of State aircraft. Messing around with leasing aircraft is wasting lots of taxpayers' money. We should grow up on this issue. If the Taoiseach or Tánaiste needs to get to a meeting somewhere, the time saving on a private jet would be more than justified. This idea of not wanting to be seen getting on a private jet is a nonsense. We have a couple of old and tatty Lear jets that are always breaking down. The Government should spend €20 million or €30 million on a proper private jet. If the Taoiseach or Tánaiste needs to go to a meeting, it should be used for that. The airforce will operate it.

On the other issue raised by the Senator, one of the challenges facing this country over the next decade is that our population will grow from 5 million to 6 million. There is net immigration of approximately 100,000 a year. We have a strong economy. If we do not have net inward migration, we will not have people to staff our hospitals and do many of the labour and agricultural jobs. We must consider what needs to be done now, given that by 2035 or 2040, the population of this country will be 6 million or 6.5 million. We need to build more housing. To be fair, the Government is getting on top of the housing situation. However, all the houses are being built outside the M50. How will people get in and out of town? There are objections to petrol and diesel cars because of their emissions. By the early 2030s, most of the car fleet will be electric. We are strangling Dublin with cycle lanes and artificial nonsensical restrictions on car movements. We should be building car parks in the centre of the city for electric cars in order that people can move easily in and out of the centre of the city. We should be fixing planning now for a motorway, an M75, around the M50. We should be putting in place that kind of infrastructure.

Dublin Airport is part of that. It will have 50 million passengers a year by 2035 or 2040. We will have a booming tourism industry. Swords will be a much bigger, wealthier town and community because Dublin Airport will continue to be an engine for it. All of that needs to be done in an environmentally sustainable and noise-efficient way. The problem is we have a Minister for Transport when we should have a Minister for infrastructure. That change should be made under the next Government. We do not plan well for the following ten years. The location of the children's hospital is a disgrace. It should be located on the M50. The way we have burned through €2 billion or €3 billion building what is a reasonably straightforward facility is a disgrace. We do not do infrastructure properly. Instead of having a Ministry of transport, communications and whatever else you are having yourself, we should have a Ministry of infrastructure that sets out ten-year and 15-year plans, making assumptions on what our population will be and how we get from here to there over that ten- or 15-year period. Then we would not have issues like we have seen with the DAA or the badly designed and ridiculously delivered children's hospital. I would hope, in that scenario, we would have much more effective delivery of infrastructure. We do not do infrastructure well because we do not focus on infrastructure. Its delivery gets divided between five or six Departments.