I propose to take Questions Nos. 1131 and 1132 together.
The application of an exemption from en-route charges for any military flights is at the discretion of the State concerned. The policy and general practice at international level is to exempt State and military aircraft from such charges. This derives from the exemption of State aircraft from the scope of the Chicago Convention establishing the International Civil Aviation Organisation. Ireland, in common with the vast majority of Eurocontrol's 41 States, subscribes to this practice.
A breakdown by country of all exemptions from en-route charges is included in the latest Eurocontrol Report on the Operation of its Route Charges System in 2015, published in March 2016. This Report is available on Eurocontrol's website at the address indicated below.
In relation to the reply to Parliamentary Question 146 of 5 May 2016, the reference to the wider aviation safety and economic benefits was made in the broader context of the benefits accruing to civil aviation activity from the collaborative and cooperative approaches inherent in Ireland's membership of Eurocontrol.
Eurocontrol is an intergovernmental organisation currently comprising 41 European States and as such provides a key forum for cooperation and collaboration between States at a detailed technical level in the provision of air navigation services for almost 10 million flights per annum in European airspace. Aviation is inherently an international business, hence the overarching necessity for cooperation and collaboration between those States in organising the detailed arrangements to be applied to international flights. It is not a practical proposition for an individual State to contemplate instituting its own aviation safety or economic arrangements in isolation from the practices and procedures being developed and implemented on an ongoing basis at a multilateral level in an organisation such as Eurocontrol.
In terms of Ireland's role in the overall Eurocontrol context, we have a pivotal geographical position between North America and continental Europe. Irish controlled airspace acts as a gateway for aviation between these two continents and in 2015 the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), on behalf of the State, safely and efficiently managed over 1 million flights. This equated to an average of 2,811 flights every day managed by the IAA at Irish State airports, through Irish controlled airspace and on the North Atlantic. This level of activity generated some €183 million in turnover to the IAA in 2015, nearly all of which was collected by Eurocontrol and remitted to the IAA.
In this context, whilst there is a monetary cost arising from the exemption of military flights from en-route charges, it is considered that these costs are more than offset by the value of the benefits flowing from Ireland's position as a gateway for transatlantic aviation, as organised through our membership of Eurocontrol.
Note: The Eurocontrol Report is available at:
https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/content/documents/route-charges/operation-reports/2015-report-on-the-operation-of-the-route-charges-system.pdf.
