Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 197: To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the progress made in developing new routes to Irish airports. [19232/11]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The market for air services in the European Union is fully liberalised so it is a matter for the airlines themselves to decide what routes they will serve based on their own commercial judgements. The Government is encouraging the airlines to deliver more tourists to Ireland. The quid pro quo for this will be the suspension of the travel tax and my officials and I have been in discussions with the airlines and the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) about this initiative over recent weeks.

The DAA and regional airports actively pursue airlines to open new routes. In addition, the DAA offer discounts on airport charges for new routes in some case for 5 years. Tourism Ireland supports airports and airlines in meeting a portion of the cost for marketing new routes. I regularly meet airline executives to encourage them to open new routes and increase capacity. I was pleased to launch the new Dublin to Charlotte route recently.

Some proposals for additional capacity and new routes have been put forward and these proposals are being examined by my Department and by external consultants to assess their potential and impact. I will consider the outcome of that assessment before making a recommendation to my Cabinet colleagues on whether or not to suspend the tax. The recent enactment of the Finance (No.2) Act, 2011 has provided the legislative basis for the suspension of the air travel tax if we decide to do so.