In Ireland our circular economy rate is at 1.6% while in Europe it is at 11.3%, which certainly shows a shortfall. Today I want to talk about Shannon Airport. Does it not make sense that the national aviation strategy be changed to address the under-capacity use of Shannon Airport and the overuse of Dublin? Where is the regional development strategy in all of this? Shannon Airport, gateway to the mid-west region, has the largest industrial base outside of Dublin. The region has transitioned to a low-carbon economy driven by industry. The airport has been voted best for customer experience and digital. It has the latest technology in its scanning system. Its infrastructure is suitable. It cuts down on flight emissions to be landing in Shannon rather than Dublin. It saves many people travelling by car, bus and train to Dublin where services are over-utilised and car parking is at an all-time premium cost. It supports a circular economy.

How can any Government justify having 87% of traffic through Dublin and 13% of all other traffic going through the other regional airports? The Minister comes in here day by day saying he wants to lower emissions yet we have thousands of cars parked in Dublin. People are travelling up from the country to get cheap flights from Dublin because the Government has allowed that airport expand from 31 million and now they want to go to 40 million. The Government starved every other airport around this country from business by letting a monopoly go in Dublin so they are priced out of the market. If I was to fly tomorrow morning the cheapest flight would be from Dublin. However, if I work in the cost of travelling to Dublin, the car parking charges which are three times dearer than any other airport in Ireland and the emissions, it costs more to fly from Dublin.

The Minister is supposed to support all of this country. He roars and shouts every day about emissions, emissions, emissions, yet he supports Dublin Airport for 87% of the traffic and the emissions from airlines flying out of Dublin also. The Minister is here for the whole country. Dispersal of traffic was mentioned to him in the convention centre over a year ago. Shannon Airport can cater for up to 4.5 million passengers. Cork can go to 5 million. However, the monopoly of all the businesses are shoved into Dublin. The Government asks people to go there from all over the country where there is no infrastructure and they have no choice but to drive to Dublin to get cheaper flights although it is costing them more. The Government takes the most out of it in tax.

I agree with the Deputy. I was going to bring it up when I was answering Deputies Doherty and Catherine Murphy earlier but I did not have time. Out of what has happened in Dublin Airport in the past few weeks and last Sunday in particular, we looked to see if we could bring people up from Shannon Airport to help in the immediate crisis but that was not possible. We need to look the other way to see if we could bring people down. I do not disagree with the Deputy. We have an imbalanced country. It is not just that all the flights are coming in and out of Dublin; all the roll-on, roll-off trucks are coming in and out of Dublin. Half the housing is in the greater Dublin region. We need better balanced regional development. There is no two ways about it. Particularly, we need the cities of Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick to grow as poles of attraction.

I agree with the Deputy about Shannon Airport having a real potential role in that. That is why right through this crisis, I did not just meet Dublin Airport but went down to Shannon Airport. I was very impressed with the management team there, I will be honest. I thought they were really top notch. It was not their fault that the airport numbers had not grown, particularly with Covid. It was no one's fault, it was Covid. Their numbers had not grown in the same way as those in Cork or Dublin, particularly Dublin. Part of what we need to look at now in aviation policy is whether we can do some rebalancing and take some of the pressure off Dublin Airport and give Shannon a lift.

In the middle of the Covid crisis, we paid for a whole new scanning system in Shannon. Passengers going through Shannon do not have to take anything out of their bag, no little plastic bag for liquids, laptops and everything - none of that. They go straight the way through because it is state of the art. I met the head of security in Shannon Airport and he was telling me about how it is working. It works like a dream. People can get in and out in no time. We have to provide better connectivity, bus services immediately. I would love to build rail and we are looking at that. That is one of the first things I said about Shannon Airport. I do not disagree with the Deputy. Better balanced regional development is one of the things we need to do, and not just in aviation, but it is as good an example as any.

It is great that the Minister and I agree on something for the first time since I have come up here. Tomorrow morning the Minister could divert flights from Dublin to Shannon and 3 million people would get out of this country with no delays. Some 2 million more people in Cork can be redeployed. The Minister was talking about bringing them up to Dublin but I am talking about taking them out of Dublin.

I have people from Dublin ringing me on a constant basis telling me the Government has destroyed their future and that of their children and grandchildren because it allowed Dublin to be overpopulated and they can no longer afford for their children to live there. They want the Minister to deploy everything back to the regional areas so all our families can live, if they want to live in Limerick or if they want to live in Dublin they are allowed do that. Dublin has been overpopulated for years and all the business has been shoved into Dublin. It is time it was dispersed around the country. Then the proper transport infrastructure would work on a business case basis because the population would be dispersed. We could have proper rail, bus and transport systems. The failure of the Government is that everything for years has been shoved into Dublin that needs to be dispersed around the country.

Dublin will still grow but the others need to grow faster. That is what the national planning framework says. It is not that it is going to do down Dublin. If everything is in Dublin, that is not good for Dublin because we will not be able to cope. It is in Dublin's interests that Limerick thrives. Shannon is very much connected to Limerick and has to be seen as part of the Limerick metropolitan area. The centre of Limerick, particularly, has to thrive.

Deputy Catherine Murphy asked earlier about what we talk about at meetings. One of the things we were discussing in the past week is whether we could do exactly as the Deputy suggests. Could we not just divert flights down? To be honest, it has great complexities and difficulties and it would not work. We would have people coming in to the country who may be going to Dublin and have already booked a flight. If we just switch the flight we will cause significant disruption and difficulty in that regard. In looking at this over the last week after the difficulties we had last Sunday, there was not that easy solution. Some other airports have done it in the UK and in Frankfurt as I recall. It tends to be done on a voluntary basis from the airlines if they see they can do it in a way that does not disrupt passengers. We cannot do it unilaterally. It is difficult enough having to queue but if people are told they are arriving somewhere they did not expect to go to, that would present difficulties. It is not an immediate solution but the longer-term solution is to look for better balanced regional development, I agree.