Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I ask the Leader to call the Minister for Transport to the House to discuss aviation in the context, in the first instance, of the need to introduce antigen testing. While I welcome the reopening of aviation on 19 July, I still believe that the lack of antigen testing - and the prospect of being aligned with all European countries or becoming an outlier - is a real concern. The fact that we are not reopening until 19 July is a concern in terms of job losses.

I would also like the Minister to make a statement on the incident in Belarus. While I welcome the investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, I believe most people would agree that the blame for everything that happened lies solely with Belarus and the authorities there. Everything I say today does not take away from the fact that the blame totally lies in Belarus. I welcome the sanctions imposed by the EU on Belarus. We need to look at ourselves and what we can do differently to make sure that something like this does not happen again, however. The transcript of the air traffic controller's communications with the plane was released last week. One can read the conversations between the air traffic controller and the pilot. One can get the sense from the pilot that there were concerns, and certainly scepticism, about the information being relayed to him. The time from when he was told there was a bomb on the plane to when he actually turned around and went to Minsk was 18 minutes. That is a lifetime in the air before a person actually makes the decision to turn around.

On all Ryanair flights, there is no satphone in the cockpit. It is important to say that there is no requirement in law to have satphones in the cockpits of planes on short-haul flights. There is a requirement in law to have such phones on long-haul flights. Most airlines have them but Ryanair does not. Satphones are extremely costly pieces of equipment. I recommend that the Minister exerts as much pressure as possible, when a review is being carried out by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, to ensure that a requirement is put in place to have a satphones on all short-haul and long-haul flights. In this day and age, a pilot should be able to contact base to say he or she has been informed of a bomb on board and tell Dublin Airport what is happening, and that an email could be sent. They would have been able to find out immediately that no email was sent. We have since found out that the email was sent after the fact and they would have been able to determine very quickly that there was an individual at risk on the flight. This is a really important issue. It is a simple thing to have a satphone in a cockpit. I urge the Minister to make that recommendation as quickly as possible.