More air routes to US - Tánaiste

The Tánaiste has said that progress is being made on increasing the number of US cities that Aer Lingus and European airlines can fly into.

Speaking at the EU-US summit, Mary Harney said that a position between the EU and US on this issue should be agreed on before the end of the year, but some form of regulation will remain in place.

"To be fair to the EU, traditionally aviation was agreed between Member States and the US, and that did lead to a lot of difficulty and duplication. I think now that it's an EU competency, we'll probably have a clearer policy framework," she said.