There's not much he can usefully say, publicly, on this matter. His efforts and those of his department should be focused on getting the green light for EI on t/a access. I think that the Shannonsiders have accepted that the end for the stopover is nigh.
Quite a few interesting articles in today's papers - the Sunday Times has a large article on EI and the SBP as well; the Sunday Indo has a story on fears about the privatisation being a flop. That can't be allowed to happen; for EI's floatation to be a disaster would put its future seriously at risk, especially as far as long haul expansion is concerned and one thing that Cullen knows he can do about this is to be able to say, in advance of the privatisation (which will be in the last week of September), is that EI can expand its US routes on the basis of last year's mini-deal.
Incidentally, one of the papers (I think it was the ST) gave a list of the airline's priority list for US growth: SFO, Philadelphia, Florida, Mid-Atlantic (BWI?) and Texas. One question that occurs to me is this: Could EI return to BWI and MCO, on the basis that it did previously, i.e. without these cities counting as one (or two) of three cities is can add under the "mini deal"?