Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Air Navigation and Transport Bill 2020 that seeks to reconfigure substantially our aviation and navigation regulation services. Sinn Féin is happy to support the Bill and will be proposing amendments on Committee Stage that we believe will improve on it. Before I delve into the issues of the Bill, I want to address the huge challenge facing workers in the aviation sector. I welcome the Minister of State's concluding remarks that if more is needed to be done, it will be done. There is a very firm opinion among workers in the sector that more does need to be done.

Sinn Féin fully supports the recent additional restrictions placed on international travel. I am sure the Minister of State is aware that we would like to see these strengthened further. Given the very high infection levels, the emergence of new coronavirus variants and the importance of protecting the vaccine roll-out, we believe very strict rules for international arrivals are essential during this time. There is still no mandatory quarantine, mandatory hotel quarantine or post-arrival testing. This is something that needs to change.

It must be realised, however, that the extension of public health restrictions means the extension of the current challenges faced by those working in the aviation and travel sector. Therefore, decisive action is needed now that will help the aviation sector survive, in the first instance, and recover more quickly. To counterbalance and to support the restrictions, the Minister for Transport must now step up and introduce measures to protect jobs in the aviation sector and the State's air connectivity at a time when international travel is significantly reduced. We have been calling for a range of reforms to help workers, but regrettably these have been resisted by the Government to date.

Since the outset of the pandemic, my colleague, Deputy Doherty, has been calling for a payment break for mortgage holders, in addition to protection from credit rating impairment and the accrual of additional interest during this time. This is permitted. As of 2 December 2020, the European Banking Authority, EBA, reactivated its payment break guidelines in light of the growth in Covid-19 infection rates throughout Europe. This position is now also a key ask of workers in the aviation sector. I urge the Minister of State and the Government to ensure that this protection is introduced. The refusal to date to introduce this protection is inexplicable and must change.

Pilots, cabin crew, ground staff, travel agents and others in the aviation and travel sectors have been some of the hardest hit workers due to the collapse of international travel during the pandemic. Many have not worked in almost a year, many have lost their jobs, while those remaining have suffered significant cuts to their pay during this time. The new restrictions are necessary, but will impact further on those workers and could lead to more job losses. The soundings from the sector are most grave. There is talk that it could be days and weeks, rather than months, before that prospect is upon us.

It is therefore crucial that the Government steps in now and provides support. There is no contradiction in supporting strongly the public health measures on the one hand and in calling for full support from the State to protect the sector and strategic connectivity on the other. Last year, we raised the issue of the €245 million connectivity fund and asked whether it could be used to support the sector. I received a reply to a parliamentary question last night on the current status of this money, which stated that responsibility for the management and control of it rests with the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA. I ask the Minister of State if the Government has engaged with the NTMA on this issue, with a view to using the fund to support the aviation and travel sectors. With the selling of our shares in Aer Lingus, we lost an important seat at the table. It was a decision that Sinn Féin opposed at the time. We continue to be proved correct on the matter. We have lost a seat at the table where we could have influenced the decisions made in a crucially important airline, namely, Aer Lingus. I ask whether the Government has examined a cash for equity approach or an extended line of credit in respect of the airlines based here, to get them over the current challenge. If not, why not?

There are lots of international comparisons, which I am sure the Minister of State has seen, in terms of the levels of state support that are being provided for the aviation sector. My primary concern in all of this is for the workers in communities right across the country. I am concerned with the international connectivity but also with the strategic regional importance of the aviation sector. It is something that absolutely has to be a number one priority for the Government. According to the international comparisons, Ireland is disproportionately dependent on aviation, yet we are really low in terms of the scale of support that is provided for the sector. We are not even on some of those charts.

Moving on to the Bill at hand, we are happy to support it. I have a number of questions for the Minister of State on various aspects of it. If she does not have time to respond today, she might get back to me with a response in advance of Committee Stage. The initial discussions on these provisions began before I was elected to the Dáil. I watched the discussion on the general scheme that took place at the transport committee in 2019. One of the topics that was raised at that time and not addressed was the cost of reconfiguration. I ask the Minister of State to come back to me with information on how that cost is broken down in terms of funding for staff, new buildings etc.

On the rights of workers, I welcome the comments by the Minister of State on the detail of the provisions in this regard. I would like more detail in terms of the level of engagement with workers, the impact these changes will have on them and what measures are being taken to ensure a smooth transition.

In regard to consumer rights, the Bill will see the dissolution of the Commission for Aviation Regulation, with its staff and functions transferring to the Irish Aviation Authority. As a result, the IAA, as regulator, will now hold responsibility for a number of areas, including consumer protection. It is my understanding that the Bill seeks to strengthen protections for consumers by providing enhancement powers to the regulator, including the creation of offences for not complying with a direction of the regulator and continuing daily offences for ongoing failures to comply with such a direction. We have seen time and again the weakness of our regulators. We have seen it, in particular, in the case of people who are waiting for flight vouchers and refunds and, worse again, those who are affected by ghost flights that left without them. They adhered to the public health advice and were penalised. There was no compensation for them and they have no protections. An Teachta O'Reilly and I wrote to the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, before Christmas pointing to the weakness of consumer protections in this regard.

In the time remaining to me, I want to flag a number of amendments which, having gone through the Bill in detail, we intend to bring forward on Committee Stage. We believe there is an opportunity to improve it in a number of areas, not least in the area of the operation of the IAA. One of the provisions that we think should be included in the Bill relates to the need for the IAA to have a graduated fines system. The proposed removal of licence as the only stick is a drastic measure and the lack of provision for other sanctions weakens the IAA. There is a need for the IAA stakeholder forums to include all stakeholders and certain parties must not be allowed to demand the exclusion of others. There is a need for industrial relations issues to be comprehensively dealt with by the IAA or for it to have the power to refer them to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. We will argue that the legislation should underpin the peer support programmes across all airlines. Finally, there should be a charter for licence holders setting out the rights and responsibilities of each party and how parties should interact with each other.

I look forward to submitting these and other amendments in due course and to the later deliberations on the Bill. I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for the opportunity to address these issues.

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