Air Navigation and Transport Bill 2020: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2021-10-05
============================================================

Hildegarde Naughton (FG), Galway West

It is important to differentiate between what we are doing in this Bill, which seeks to reform the regulatory structure, and industrial relations issues. It is very clear that we should not conflate the two and both aspects are equally important.
The internal dispute resolution board was established with union agreement. It is important, as frustrating as it is, that both sides engage and try to resolve matters.
In terms of the amendments, I reiterate that putting charters and fora into statute and hard coding it will have an impact on the independence of the regulator. That will remove the flexibility that an independent regulator needs. A CEO-designate has given an explicit commitment and promise to engage on the charter and forum. He has stated as much in his draft statement of strategy.
I ask Senators to consider me facilitating a meeting with the CEO-designate in advance of Report Stage to go through the issues raised and amendments tabled on Committee Stage. That would be a valuable exercise and the Senators could see for themselves his commitment to this engagement with all stakeholders and addressing many of the issues raised by them tonight.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2021-10-05/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:38+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-10-05