Mary O'Rourke (Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister for coming to the House and his officials with whom I worked closely in the past. As the Minister will know, he is very well served.

This has been an interesting debate and people have not been afraid to state their points of view. Senator O'Toole said we did not give credit to the unions. I constantly spoke about the role of the unions in saving the airline whenever the opportunity presented itself, and I know the Minister for Transport, Deputy Cullen, feels the same.

There is no crisis now that compares to the crisis of September 2001 after the fateful events in New York. Aer Lingus was already on the decline, but when that happened the sky fell in for aviation. First, nobody wanted to travel. Second, there were concurrent difficulties because of the approach taken by Madam de Palacia who was Transport Commissioner at the time. I am sure the Minister has seen the files. We continually begged to be allowed to provide funding and came back with our tail between our legs. It seemed very odd that while other national airlines throughout Europe were somehow miraculously able to get permission to fund — maybe they dressed the issue up a bit — the Commissioner said "No" to Ireland far more often than former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ever did. The result was that we were faced with an airline that had no money, aviation in decline and the horror of September 2001. However, everybody pulled together and that is a lesson that should be learned.

That was entirely different from the oil crisis of the early 1990s when a very fine chairman, Mr. Cahill, since deceased, pulled the airline around. On this occasion the chairman had taken up the position only three weeks earlier and found himself in the middle of a maelstrom. However, he worked amazingly hard. The three Aer Lingus executives who are retiring have given great service to the airline. They are very clever people and have worked very well with the airline. However, the Government has nothing to do with the appointment of CEOs or ancillary staff in management. That is the duty of the board and of the chairman.

That brings me to my next point. I am sure the current chairman is an excellent person. However, a working chairman is necessary. Decisions must be made by the board and the chairman. I agree with Senator Quinn, but I would like to see a timetable for the commissioning of new planes. I was on a new Aer Lingus plane recently. It had all new shiny leather and so on and was built by Shorts. There should be a timetable of when the real money will be needed. If it is for planes, and we believe it is, the Government should consider an equity injection to achieve that.