Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for being in the Chamber to take questions and contributions from Members. Fianna Fáil fully supports the Air Navigation and Transport Bill 2020. This Bill provides for the institutional reorganisation of aviation regulation in Ireland. The legislation will contribute to best practice approaches and ensure the aviation regulator is fit for purpose for emerging challenges over the coming decades. Currently, aviation regulation is split between the Irish Aviation Authority, IAA, and the Commission for Aviation Regulation. The IAA is also involved in the provision of some for-profit air navigation services. Its dual commercial-regulatory mandate is an outlier in a European and international context.

While the IAA is highly regarded at home and abroad, it is difficult to argue for its current functions to persist, given that it is a State body with important non-commercial oversight functions and, at the same time, a commercial mandate to run a service for profit.

I wish to make a few more general points about aviation. The Government has thus far been very good to aviation, with more than €80 million having been channelled into propping up the sector, which, along with tourism, has been most exposed to the ravages of Covid. Operational capital funding of €22 million was provided for Cork and Shannon Airports and additional regional airport funding for Knock, Kerry and Donegal airports has also been sanctioned. When the Minister of State was concluding her contribution a short time ago, she stated that if more is needed to be done, it will be done. That has to be the starting point for actions hereafter.

We have all received quite a number of emails during the week from the Irish Airline Pilots Association, IALPA, and from members of ground crews and flight crews and all those who work in operations and maintenance, repair and overhaul, MRO. I am very concerned about Lufthansa Technik and all the other MRO companies based around Shannon Airport in my constituency of Clare. They can function only when aircraft are landing at airports and requiring maintenance, and that simply is not happening. It is an ancillary service to aviation that is floundering and it will require State support.

There is a severe imbalance in aviation and the Minister of State gets this because this point has been made to her repeatedly. The market share that Dublin Airport holds has increased year on year in comparison with other airports, to the detriment mostly of Shannon Airport, and to a lesser extent, of Cork Airport. We will need a new aviation policy to take this country beyond Covid. Some good suggestions have been made to the Minister of State and the Department. The Copenhagen Economics report, commissioned by Limerick Chamber, is one of the best documents I have seen. It looked at other countries such as Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands, where aviation policy has been turned on its head. There are now requirements that a certain quota of flights come into the regional airports rather than having everything channelled into the capital city airports. That is good and we need to consider such a measure in Ireland as well. There should not be this imbalance going forward. This low starting point, in the depths of Covid, is the perfect time to overhaul aviation policy.

There is a cargo future for Irish aviation and Shannon Airport is positioned to exploit it best. Only 1% of all cargo leaving Ireland is airborne and that could be greatly enhanced. There was some potentially good news this week, with Amazon looking at developing a distribution node at Shannon Airport. Ciaran Callaghan and Damien O'Regan have been in correspondence with the Department about the possibility of a new form of cargo hub, again at Shannon Airport. It has a really long runway with the capacity to take the largest jets in the world, and it is the perfect stepping stone from North America to continental Europe. Our first, tumultuous month of Brexit is behind us and we need to consider enhanced connectivity. It is not all about the land bridge; we need to consider an air bridge as well, and Shannon Airport provides that opportunity, so I ask the Minister of State to consider that.

Covid will linger for quite some time. PCR testing is not costed similarly throughout the European Union and there is significant variation, at €140 or €150 in Ireland and other countries, while in Spain and North Macedonia, the very same gold-standard test costs €30. A Ryanair flight, FR7124, will take off at 6.25 a.m. on Saturday next from Dublin Airport and land about three hours later in Lanzarote. That is not essential travel by any metric. I did not get to listen to "Liveline" earlier but I heard that a lady called the show, incredibly, from her balcony in an apartment in Spain, justifying why she should be out there. That is not essential travel. We will only get full buy-in to these restrictions, which nobody likes but which we need, when non-essential flights stop happening. That runs against everything I have been saying for many months, but right now we are at peak Covid and this should not be happening.

Air fare refunds continue to be a big issue. There is a crazy case in my constituency, where 80 students from St. Joseph's Secondary School in Tulla were due to fly to Barcelona last year for a school tour. Ryanair still owes them €17,500 in air fare refunds but it is playing molly bán, saying it cannot refund the travel agency that booked the trip but that it can refund the individuals. It does not work like that and Ryanair needs to step up to the plate and provide the refunds.

Covid presents opportunities. Business jets are not the domain just of the Kardashians and people who wear bling and gold chains. Many multinational companies bring their staff into and out of Ireland using business jets. Shannon Airport, along with Aruba and the Bahamas, has a singular advantage in that it offers pre-clearance on flights to America. There is a problem, however. Currently, about 1,500 jets a year fly between Ireland and America, but that could be increased four or fivefold. We have reach to 220 airports but that figure could increase to 900 if we were able to overcome a client-catering issue. Food that is served on flights needs to be incinerated at the end of the journey. A new procedure, called the agricultural pre-clearance test programme, was trialled by the US Government in 2018 and was successful. It would open up significant opportunities for Ireland but it needs to be made permanent. I have written to the Biden Administration and the US ambassador to Ireland. The matter is now with the US Department of Agriculture and I implore the Minister of State and the Department to push ahead with that regulation to open the considerable opportunities for Shannon Airport and other airports to better exploit private aviation and the spin-off benefit that has for the communities and regions that surround them.

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