James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for being here dealing with her portfolio and responsibility for the area of aviation. There is no question our aviation sector and the 140,000 livelihoods supported by it before Covid-19 are under serious pressure. The Government must do absolutely everything it can to help rebuild our connectivity, the economic strength of the aviation sector before Covid and to provide the supports that are necessary to enable that to happen.

At yesterday's meeting of the transport committee, I went into quite a lot of detail on the major issues we are not addressing, including antigen testing. One point made by the Chief Medical Officer to the committee which quite concerned me related to whether the Department of Transport had engaged with NPHET directly on the issue of such testing. I would encourage an increase in the level of contact between NPHET, the Departments of Transport and Health on the use of rapid antigen testing in airport settings. That is crucial.

I am a Deputy from Cork and I want to use my time to discuss Cork Airport. It is an incredibly important hub for connectivity and for investment into the Cork region, as well as for international tourism. I am worried about the level of support that our airport is getting. As it is under the umbrella of the Dublin Airport Authority, which is obviously good in many circumstances but also from the point of view of its own financial situation, it is important the airport gets the same level of funding Shannon gets for capital expenditure, capex, and operating expenditure, opex.

We are going to see a long recovery period in the aviation sector. To assist our airports in opening up the new routes required and rebuilding the routes that have been affected by Covid, they will need continued financial assistance from the Department over the next number of years. In the context of capex and opex funding, it is crucial that the Department continues to work to secure funding for airports such as that in Cork. We desperately need that to happen. If it does not happen, it will put enormous strain on Cork Airport and aviation in general across the southern half of the country. I am told by aviation executives that we could be looking potentially at a three- to four-year recovery period to get back to levels of traffic similar to those that obtained in 2019. Obviously, this is not fantastic news for people working in aviation. It is deeply troubling to them in fact. We have to ensure the State does everything it possibly can.

It has been highlighted to me repeatedly by the people working in airport management that they are concerned about the level of advancement in terms of the Government's integration of the digital green certificate technology and about some of the anomalies which need to be addressed. Will the Minister of State have a round-table discussion with our airport CEOs and relevant management on that particular issue with the Irish Aviation Authority and other relevant stakeholders? We need to get that right from the start. We cannot afford to waste any more time on that particular issue.

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