Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

What we have is a big juggernaut in Dublin, with 33 million passengers. The rest are feeding off the crumbs. The Minister of State is saying that herself, which is welcome, but the two are interlinked and do not work in isolation. It is not down to the programme alone. The national aviation policy is the overarching policy. It is in this that the figure of 1 million passengers is included. That precludes us. It has to be reviewed also, maybe in parallel. Maybe the Minister of State will consider this. There is confusion.

I welcome the Minister of State’s announcement on Saturday. It is also welcome that she is here today. Fundamental reform is long overdue. The critical objective is to enable airports such as Shannon to have a level playing field. We do not have one because all roads lead to Dublin. The first time we got a few bob was this year. We made good use of it.

Committee members were in Rotterdam Airport last week. We could see its investment in renewables. A whole apron of the airport is covered in solar panels, of all things. These provide the electricity in the airport. All the airport vehicles are electric; they have transitioned. The excess electricity is being fed back into the grid. The airport uses about one third of what it generates. There is no reason Shannon Airport could not do this. I welcome the fact that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the ESB on the development of a hydrogen facility at a location in or around the airport. Therefore, it is getting into that space. The regional airports programme could support Shannon even further in this regard, so it really does make sense.