Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)

As the Deputy said, this has already been raised by Deputy Ahern. I am happy to say, first, that we are committed to reviewing and updating the national aviation policy, which will bring about a new policy. That will involve stakeholder consultation. Effectively, we will publish a draft in the coming months. The draft will go out to public consultation and consultation in the House, and I would expect Deputy O'Hara and all interested Members to have an input into that. We have also committed in the programme for government to a new regional airports policy, the regional airports programme 2026-2030, and the preparatory work on that is being done.

That does not stop what we are already doing in the sector. We want to see continued growth in aviation and I have already referenced some of the numbers across all of our airports. We are projecting some 40.39 million passengers for 2025 across all airports, although that is a projection and it comes with a bit of a health warning. That is at or about what it was in 2024. We are seeing growth in our regional airports and we want that to continue. As referenced earlier, we have seen Cork and Shannon grow and the projection for Ireland West is a further increase in passengers.

The national aviation policy needs to support that and we have committed to reviewing, updating and publishing a new national aviation policy. I am very happy to engage with the Deputy and colleagues across the House as we put that new aviation policy together. It will go in front of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport at the appropriate time and I expect the committee will more than likely hold hearings with stakeholders to get their views. This will be a piece of work to be done across the House.

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