Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has all the pieces of the jigsaw there. There are the two airstrips, which are the big cost. There are the aeroplanes based in Na Minne. They are already there and are not fully utilised, so it is a marginal cost to use the pilots and the planes, which are not flying all day because of the constraints on the Aran service, to provide a number of services to Inishbofin. There is no major cost to this. Nobody has costed it in recent times but I had it costed as Minister, and it would not be significant, because most of the overhead costs are already incurred, particularly the base.

The Minister should forget about the public consultation and the standard answer she has given me. Will she sit down and examine how much it would cost to put in this service, given the small residual capital cost of some buildings and fire engines, and then the cost of running it on an annual basis as a lifeline service to the people of Inishbofin?

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