Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his openness concerning several amendments we have tabled. If there is anything we can do on this side of the House when the Minister is having the discussions, we will be glad to help. We do have a problem because, left to themselves, airport architects and engineers would gladly spend the entire GDP on building new airports. We are attempting to put some kind of restraint on their activity by requiring the numbers.

For instance, the growth of Charleroi in Belgium to a 5 million passenger airport was because it was independent from the main Brussels airport. It was able, one presumes, to assist the Belgian authorities by saying that it could do all those things without that many terminals or the high level of labour costs. The information we are trying to get before policy-makers would have arisen in that kind of context.

There is unlikely to be a competing Dublin airport to restrain it from excesses, so there has to be an administrative solution involving the publication of numbers that the Minister mentioned. I am glad he is open to that development. We will assist him in that regard if we can be of any great use.

It is important to recognise that we got into a serious problem of high cost airports and over-investment because we did not have those kind of numbers. There was nobody to say we already had far too many runways or terminal buildings for an airport of that size and that our costs were too high. That may be why airlines do not want to fly to a given airport. It is not because the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport has not been promoting the destination enough, but one has to get into the marketplace and meet these airlines.

I will not push the amendment but I am glad it is in the Minister's thoughts to do something like that as aviation policy develops. I thank him for his interest and for his response.