Ms Lynne Embleton:

The wage support was welcome and was used to maintain the employment relationship with people who would otherwise have lost their jobs. Let us be clear. That is what that money was all about. Even with that money, we were losing €1 million per day throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and our balance sheet is still severely damaged by Covid-19.

When we had long-haul aeroplanes on the ground that we could not fly out of Ireland, flying them out of Manchester was a free capacity lift. We had the aeroplanes anyway and we could not use them anywhere else. As soon as flights from Ireland to the US became possible, we flew from Ireland to the US. At the same time, we flew from Manchester to the US. Those two things were completely unconnected and were market opportunities.