James Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact some progress has been made on the issue of people whose pensions were detrimentally affected by the Act passed in 2012. I have raised the issue many times. The Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, has been working hard on this and received Cabinet agreement on allowing post-2012 pensioners choose between their current rate and that to be introduced under the total contribution approach. In most cases, people will gain and those who might not gain will not have to change over. I know there is work to be done on correcting the losses sustained over recent years.

Yet again I raise the need for a competent independent regulator to rule on operating conditions at Dublin Airport. Passenger numbers hit 30 million last year, up from 18 million in 2011 when Fine Gael came into Government. This is a great success story for tourism but the Dublin Airport Authority, DAA, and local residents need clarity on planning conditions at Dublin Airport where a new runway is under construction. If the existing planning conditions are applied, traffic at Dublin Airport will be restricted to 27 million passengers which is 3 million fewer. The impact of that on Dublin Airport, with Brexit looming, is there for everyone to see. Each job at Dublin Airport is followed by nine ancillary jobs. Transatlantic passenger figures are up as well because we have USA pre-clearance and there were 3.5 million passengers last year.

Dublin Airport is one of the most important economic assets in the country. It supports or facilitates 117,300 jobs and contributes €8.3 billion to the national economy. It was 78 years old yesterday. It supports 20,000 jobs directly. The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport needs to come back in here. He cannot go on ignoring this problem. A regulator needs to be put in place and if there is a need for legislation to do it, we need to fast track that. We cannot leave this matter hanging in the balance and creating uncertainty for the people who live around the airport and the important jobs created by the airport and the potential to create more.

I ask the Leader to call the Minister in to explain his plans. He has had ample opportunity to address this issue. He promised us that the Irish Aviation Authority would rule on this and then decided this would not be the case. He owes it to the people around the airport and to the Irish economy to rule on this and do so quickly.