I want to bring to the attention of the House a huge issue relating to transport in Ireland, which is Dublin Airport. It is a fantastic facility with 30 million passengers passing through annually. That is approximately 83,000 passengers every day. It has exceeded its capacity. The staff at Dublin Airport are great, as Senator Marshall has said. Fantastic people are working hard to try to cope with that volume of passengers, but they are not able to deal with it.

I suggest moving to Baldonnel. That aerodrome is ready and completed. It is used by the Air Corps and is owned by the Department of Defence. The runway is long enough to accommodate the vast majority of commercial aircraft coming to the country. It is nine miles from Dublin city centre and it is located near a significant number of business parks in a greenfield area. Let us consider airports in other cities. In Belfast, for example, Belfast City Airport has 2.6 million passengers and Belfast International Airport has 5.8 million. There are two airports in Belfast. There are two airports in Glasgow - Prestwick and Glasgow Airport. There are 2 million people in the greater Dublin area and 1.7 million in Warsaw, which has three airports. Milan has two airports while Brussels with a population of 1.1 million has two airports.

I hope the House will support my suggestion to ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport through the Leader to actively look at Baldonnel as a second airport for Dublin. It is critical at this stage. We are an island community. If we have a vision for transport to facilitate access, we need to look at an alternative to Dublin Airport.

I welcome the good news announced by Limerick and Clare ETB regarding an apprenticeship programme it is putting in place along with Clenn Construction, an American company, to build eco-friendly homes. They are coming in and training people in how to build homes in an eco-friendly manner. We hear a lot about climate change and our housing crisis. More than 100 people have been accepted on the apprenticeship programme. This will go a long way to providing people with the skills to address our housing shortage by building houses in a quicker manner.

I welcome the fact that An Bord Pleanála yesterday decided to grant planning permission in respect of an €8 million expansion of the Savoy Hotel in Limerick. This will create up to 75 jobs. There were objections to the project, but when we have tourists coming into the country, bringing development not only to Dublin but also in the various regions outside of the capital, it is very important that we give as much support as possible to expansions of this nature, which will lead to job creation down the line and which will also provide for tourists.

Regarding Senator Ó Céidigh's call for another runway at Dublin Airport, there are plenty of runways in the regional airports as well. There is a great counterbalance in the west of Ireland, of which I am sure the Senator is aware, between-----

Senator Ó Céidigh is from the west of Ireland just as much as Senator Byrne.

-----Knock, Galway, Shannon and Cork. The airports in these locations are very much open for business and competition.