Dublin Airport New Runway/Infrastructure.

Ok thanks.

Does this part: in line with the definition of passenger by the International Air Transport Association (Ref. IATA, Standard Schedules Information Manual, RP1761b)

suggest they want to formally establish the correct methodology for counting of passengers vs the current situation where they said they were counting a particular way (not double counting transfer passengers in order to stay below the cap in 2023) while cso figures etc were saying they had breached it?

When i read that I thought it was reasonable to include for future clarity purposes.

Childish stuff from DAA. They need to pick up the phone and talk to FCC (again).

"Update: DAA ‘baffled and bewildered’ as Fingal rules application to boost passenger cap invalid
The operational application was part of the DAA’s Infrastructure Application to increase the terminals combined cap to 40 million a year

An operational application to raise Dublin Airport’s capacity to 36 million passengers per year has been deemed invalid by the Fingal County Council’s planning authority.

The authority notified Dublin Airport Authority (daa) that a ‘no build’ application submitted to Fingal County Council in December doesn’t comply with a number of articles outlined in the 2001 Planning and Development Regulations.

The authority also said the airport’s description of the development in the public notices is “inadequate and misleading” and as a result, is non-compliant with the relevant regulations.

It was hoped that this part of the application would have moved swiftly through the planning process as it does not seek permission to build any infrastructure.

In a statement the planning authority said “it is a matter of great concern that such a significant planning application is invalid”.

“Pre-planning is available to assist applicants but did not take place for this application,” it added.

Read more on the passenger cap
DAA expects cap decision from ECJ within 12 months

Dublin Airport sees 33.3 million passengers in 2024 as DAA revenue soars to €1.1bn

DAA to submit application to allow for 36 million passengers through Dublin Airport

Due to a 2007 planning condition related to the opening of Terminal 2, the number of passengers permitted to pass through both of Dublin Airport’s terminals per year is 32 million.

The DAA applied for planning permission to remove the cap in December 2023.

In a statement DAA said it is “baffled and bewildered” by what it called a “bizarre flip-flop” by Fingal county council (FCC).

“FCC’s planners twice confirmed the validity of DAA’s ‘no build’ application on 23 December and again on 6 January – yet this evening sent out a media statement saying it was invalid,” a DAA spokesperson said.

“DAA lodged this straightforward ‘no build’ application to provide a short-term solution to the planning cap impasse,” the spokesperson said.

The semi-state went on to say that FCC “refuses to be pragmatic about this issue of national importance, despite allowing for 40 million in its own development plan.”

Following this latest development planning decisions about Dublin Airport “should be made at a national level by ABP [An Bord Pleanála] and not locally by FCC,” the DAA spokesperson added."

I read earlier, a minister asked if aer lingus would consider flying from Cork to US due to the cap. Ryanair and aer lingus, should cease flights for a day and ramp it up, if government don't sort out this farce. Someine needs to drastically up the ante... from what I understand is, now that the tin of worms is open, this is going to be ongoing for years ?

This really is a Dail issue and it's way out of FCC league... a few gobshites in the council that are obviously going to cause as many issues as they can...

Not sure if childish is a word I’d use to describe this. Very interesting that the daa claim the 36m application was a FCC idea!!!

https://dublinpeople.com/news/northsideeast/articles/2025/01/15/56744-2/?amp=1

These are two public bodies. Without taking sides, I just think they need to behave sensibly and park the shouting, even if one or both considers the other party to be at fault. Differences don't get solved through megaphone diplomacy.

Where would you put the authority for such planning decisions?

New government now, I expect them to do nothing about it…

what exactly is mentioned, the same nonsense that they have talked about for months and done nothing about?!

It's reasonable to include that clarification in the documents submitted. Which will contain many opinions and interpretation in the various reports. But the application form, site and newspaper notices etc is not the place for that. It's completely fluffed up and hard to follow. It only need to be a simple description, and a layperson would roughly understand the scope from. The detail goes in the application.

If the form asks for the area, you give the area, you don't say "25,000m2 but is the consider the application pending for the alternate wing, and discount the potential demolition, and exclude potential development not to be action the area can be considered less than 22,000sqm".

It's pretty childish imo. The FCC are not saying the idea of a no-build increase is invalid. They are saying that the application form is not completed correctly. And from looking at a few documents, it's a bit of a mess (in my professional opinion). There are errors that I was able to pick up as an external view, how nobody internally reviewed and spotted them is baffling.

The council doesn't have power of veto. If the council reject the application (which that haven't done), then it passes to ABP.

Going straight to ABP would also be appropriate, but the reality is that the time the FCC have added to the application was clearly needed by DAA anyway given the state of the documents at this point.

I appreciate the inner documents are for the detail. Is the issue around whether the site notices actually reflected the detail in the bill? Perhaps the inaccuracies you mentioned related to this?

When we applied for planning from fingal we received notice of our PP lodgement. There was an issue with the PP description so it was the denied and we had to adjust the wording. We reapplied and got it. Very similar situation to the daa except it has huge resources to be able get it right the first time. Amateurish behaviour.

A number of people have suggested reclassifying the airport as strategic infrastructure. I believe declassification occured around 2018 under

https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2018/130/eng/memo/b13018dmemo.pdf.

To quote:

“Amendment of Seventh Schedule to Act of 2000 and related transitional provisions
Section 18 declassifies development at Dublin Airport as strategic infrastructure development (SID) for the purposes of planning applications. This measure will mean that an application for planning permission for development at Dublin Airport will revert to being processed in the same way as most planning applications - any application will be made to Fingal County Council in the first instance, with provision for appeal to the Board against its decision. This arrangement will facilitate the involvement of the Competent Authority in the processing of a planning application that has an EU Regulation 598/2014 noise dimension or an application to remove or alter the terms of an operating restriction forming part of an existing planning permission and enable the Board to be the Appeals Body in relation to decisions on such applications. The section also sets out the transitional arrangements that will apply to proposed strategic infrastructure development applications that, at the time the declassification comes into effect, may be at various stages of the strategic infrastructure development process.”

The daa actively lobbied for this bill.

This involved the creation of ANCA. Indeed the daa had commenced updating their planning permission to increase the cap but scrapped it when this bill process started. The suspicion is that the daa felt that anca would be more amenable to changing regulations to its favour- and indeed the relevant action process (in which anca completely supported the daa's ask for the noise quota without movement limit only to have ABP issue a draft decision in which a movement quota has been reintroduced) would support this.

Daa appear to have no issue attempting to change regulations to their favour and then moan when they don't get what they want. Now Kenny Jacobs is moaning that the airport isn't strategic infrastructure. 7 years ago the daa didn't want it to be!

That said I am one of the local loonies so obviously biased.

That's all quite interesting. Whilst it seems on the surface that daa wanted it declassified, I would guess that that was the only way to achieve the required planning. The competent authority couldn't sit within ABP so it had to sit within the local authority, or that was considered the easiest place for it to sit. In order for them to have jurisdiction over it as a competent authority then the permission needs to sit with them. It was likely the 'easiest' and quickest solution that got the new runway open, but there are then unintended consequences. I never understood why the EPA wasn't considered/given the role of competent authority for this.

Either way, it seems they should establish the airport on some legal/licenced basis that would allow the required monitoring.

Kenny needs to stop washing laundry in public. Hard to walk all that back

DAA posted a couple of images of emails from Fingal saying the application was declared valid (before they went public saying it was invalid) . Email was on 6th Jan.

So a major question would be us why do FCC say one thing to the DAA and something different to the media.

https://x.com/DublinAirport/status/1879921556673163612?t=O4X0r9fLeDH-M4EfrCgIEg&s=19

Well obviously. If it's not getting resolved you can either keep trying the same thing over and over or change the approach.

I'm from Swords, every councillor in the last election was in favour of the cap. The DAA seem to be working to change the public opinion of this or move it to a government responsibility rather than the council.