Senator Gerard Craughwell - speech from 28 Sep 2021

Minister, you're welcome to the House. I want to welcome the Bill, Minister, that you're bringing before the House, but I would say at this point that it doesn't go far enough, and we'll talk about that in a few moments. The last two years, as my colleague Senator Buttermore has pointed out, has been a very difficult time for the aviation industry, and indeed on the Transport Committee we have spent an extraordinary amount of time. looking at the rebuilding of the air transport communication system for the country, and I'd compliment both Senator Dooley and Senator Buttermore for their input into the committee. They certainly haven't let down the side they come from, but they have had a global view as well, and I welcome that. Minister, I welcome the objective to merge the regulatory functions of the Irish Aviation Authority and the Commission, for Aviation Regulation, but I do so with some reservations, and I'll get to those in a couple of seconds. I hope in establishing an independent regulator, we're establishing a strengthened regulator, and I look forward to having new commercial semi-state to manage and control Irish airspace. One of the grave things that has bothered me for some time was the failure, to date, to have a written report on the crash of Rescue 116, and that simply isn't good enough. I don't know why it hasn't happened up to date, but certainly if we have an independent regulator in there who's strong enough, they will see to it that these things are reported on time. It should have been reported within 12 months. I know the European airline pilots are somewhat concerned about it. I welcome what you say about the charges with Dublin Airport, and that's a good thing. Consumer-focused, I have no difficulty with that. I do however believe the bill can be strengthened with some of the things that I'm going to mention now. As you know, a key stakeholder in all of this is the Airline Pilots Association, and the Airline Pilots Association seem to be finding it difficult to have their concerns listened to. One of the things that we need to talk about is we need to talk about the licences. You mentioned the licence holders. It's somewhat ironic in this day and age that a pilot who is licensed to fly an aircraft has to go through his employer or her employer in order to make a recommendation or to notify the statutory authority of some particular difficulty that he or she may have. And that applies not just to pilots but it applies to engineers and it applies to cabin crew. And that's simply not good enough that you would have to go to your employer if, for example, you're complaining about some practice that your employer has implemented, which in your view calls into question the safety of the airline. It's well-justified concern, Minister, that licence holders have no mandate to interact directly with the new regulator. They're on the risk of being caught between the commercial concerns of their employers and the regulatory or safety concerns that they would have themselves. Licence holders need a formal way to engage with the regulator that is statute-based and away from the commercial owner of the fleet they're flying for. We need, for all intents and purposes, a charter for licence holders. In this way both the licence holder and the IAA will know precisely what their obligations are and there will be no room for ambiguous interpretation by a commercial airline operator. We have plenty of examples which I won't go into because in this country we only have two main airline providers so I'm not going to go into it. But they are extremely dominant and I was delighted to hear Senator Busselmore talk about Ryanair increasing 22, I think you said, new routes out of Cork. That's really good news. But it makes these airline companies extremely powerful when it comes to dealing with them. So that's something we need to be aware of. Where am I now? Yep. There's a number of amendments that I want to bring to you, Minister. And rather than walking into this House at committee stage and putting amendments down and we are talking for God knows how long on them and at the end of the day the amendments get kicked aside and voted down, I would much prefer work with you and your officials on the amendments we will be bringing forward. The crew support programme, Senator Gahan spoke about it a few moments ago. We need, if you want, a standard operating procedure for crew support systems. We need a set of guidelines. We do not need the airline having control over how that's set up. We do not need the airline having control over who will form the peer support group and who will not form the peer support group in a particular airline. It's too dangerous an industry not to provide the supports that pilots would need. And pilots need peer support that they can engage with and that they are not afraid to go to with their stories. As I said, the licence holder charter, we can't have a situation, Minister, where the licence holder, the pilot, has to go to his or her employer and say to them that I have a difficulty with the regulations that you're asking me to fly under and I need to go to the regulator with them. And the employer says, no, you can't. Or in the case of some of the airlines now using contract employees, it makes it very, very difficult for a licensed pilot to go outside the airline he's working for. So I'll be bringing forward an amendment on that and I know I'll be supported by some of my colleagues there. The other one, investigation and administration penalties. Minister, I know that you're aware of some of these things. But if you have a situation where there's an administrative problem and you need a sanction, the sanctions at the moment that we have are punitive. And, you know, you close down the airline because they're not doing something right. You just can't do that. So what we need is we need a graduated set of sanctions whereby there might be a fine of €100,000 for the sake of argument over some breach today. If the breach is still in place tomorrow, it goes to 200,000 and it goes up by 200,000 every day the breach is in place. I think that's a very reasonable request from the Airline Pilots Association. So I think when it comes to it, we should work on the four amendments we'll be bringing forward. It won't disrupt the bill. The bill is a great idea. You're going to get the bill through. But it will strengthen the bill. It will bring all of the stakeholders on side and it will make for a robust system going forward. There should never be anything left to ambiguity at this stage when we're talking about airline safety and airline practices. So I would ask if you would give me a commitment today that you will engage with me and with other colleagues who have dealt with IELPA and various other agencies that are supporting crews and pilots within the airline industry. And see if we can deliver something that will meet everybody's needs, not just the needs of the commercial supplier. So I'll leave it at that because I can see my time is running out. Thank you very much.