Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

It presents the plan. The regulator forensically goes through the plan and decides, on the basis of it, what he will allow to be charged against the cost, what expenses are allowed, whether it is being operated in an efficient manner or whether there is "fat" in the system, etc. After every determination - I have been in this position for a couple of them - the airport is never satisfied and the airlines are never satisfied. At this stage, it is probably reasonable to argue that the regulator gets it reasonably right. If Dublin Airport Authority is inefficient or ineffective, the regulator is there to ensure that it does not get rewarded for that.

In fairness to Dublin Airport Authority's management and union, they have sat down and agreed new fairly radical work practices, changes, etc., which make their operations much more effective and they will carrying those practices into terminal 2. In a situation where there is only one airport, it is regulated and the regulator looks after the competition element.

On the competition that was run, the method chosen was to ask the Dublin Airport Authority to give its price, to ask others to bid and if another's price was cheaper than the Dublin Airport Authority, if the other had a legal bid in, then the other would get it automatically.

We did not get beyond the first stage of that, as I explained previously in this House. Deputy O'Dowd is correct that there were quite a number of operators who applied for this, but none of them met the financial or other criteria laid down. I had no choice but to make the decision to allow Dublin Airport Authority confirm to me that it could do this within the regulated price, and at this stage it has done so.

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