Who actually wants the Dublin Airport passenger cap abolished?

By 2057 according to the latest CSO figures there are expected to be just over 7 million people living in Ireland, this island nation. Figures suggest that 5.38 people live here now. So capping the most cost effective and efficient way of getting on and off of the island is just bonkers.

There is/was no plan to cap the airport long term.

FCC’s 2006 plan was for a 30-32m airport to cover growth to 2016. Predicting 38m by 2025. In 2019 that was updated to, I think, 40m by 2030 and 55m by 2050.
The plan is to further develop the airport and eventually build a third terminal to cover growth to 7m+. The cap increases with that development

The problem with increasing the price of air travel is that you will also increase the cost of the ferry and any future fixed link we might have as people still have a need to travel and that's how the supply/demand curve works

Instead of trying to tax airlines, why not instead cut taxes on ferries? You would get largely the same result

Holy bad faith argument Batman!

It's funny how people accuse others of being angry, with zero evidence, in order to make up for the fact that their argument is a steaming pile of horseh1t. It's also funny that you have now completely abandoned the price comparison element because, as we've shown, it falls at the first hurdle. Your entire argument has been sunk and you're now treading water with the sharks.

"I mean, of course you include the cost of food and drink when you're going to be spending up to an extra 8 hours on the road when you get the bus & ferry versus a plane."

And it appears that you brought in the cost of food en route, despite your claim that the other poster brought it in. And you accuse me of lying? Hm.

This is a lie. I never said another poster brought in the cost of food. I said, they brought the final tenner for the train into the argument. I also clarified it for you, but you failed to understand it. I'm also saying, if you're gonna take the tenner for the Stansted express into account, then you might as well take the cost of the food into account also, because spending 4hrs flying can be done with nothing more than a bottle of water while spending 12hrs+ on a ferry and a coach can not. The food is not the same, despite your previous claims that it is.

Then you decide accommodation is a cost of overland travel where it's not of air travel. That only makes sense if you consider the very specific example of a day trip to London.

No, it doesn't. It makes even more sense when considering somewhere further afield. If I fly into Lisbon, have a meeting, then fly home, I don't need any accommodation because it can all be done in the same day. If I want to drive there, it will take about 30hrs each way and will require somewhere to sleep on the way AND on the way back. Not factoring this cost in is a con.

The London example is the one we have been using all along, primarily because it is one of the busiest routes in the country. If you want to change the destination and make a comparison, go right ahead. Let's compare with somewhere further afield, though, instead of somewhere closer. Do Paris, or Madrid, or Amsterdam and we'll see how your comparison stands up.

That's not a great example for someone who's trying to show air is always much better than land.

More lying. I never claimed it was better (even though it is better), I claimed it was cheaper. This was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt and you have changed the goalposts because your original point was blown out of the water.

Michael O'Leary's algorithms are well-known - for example I showed flights to London at €200 one way. They'll adjust according to interest and major events and so on, to fleece you at certain times. Which is fine - but it means your prices don't always apply.

Again, I have no idea what relevance Mo'L has to the topic being discussed. I'm well aware that the prices don't always apply, which is why I originally said in pretty much every scenario, bar a few, especially last minute. Cherry picking the odd expensive flight that's 3 days away and using that as a basis for making ridiculous claims is disingenuous and in bad faith.

And "an unspecified amount of GHG" - what's that about? I gave a link which shows exactly how much greenhouse gas per passenger any specific flight will emit. What's unspecified about that?

It's unspecified because you never included how much GHGs the alternate emits. All you're saying is 'flying produces X amount of GHGs". You're not saying "my way produces Y amount, therefore the amount of GHGs saved is X minus Y which equals Z". That's what makes it unspecified. Plus it's all guesswork, the exact figures aren't known.

Three hours of your time (I showed why I view the time as 8 hours v 5 and you're welcome to challenge that, but you didn't do that)

You selected the quickest possible ferry option and the furthest airport possible outside London to make your comparison. You deliberately compared the worst case scenario on one side with the best case on the other side. This is another form of deception to strengthen your argument. You also lied about the time it takes to get to the city (it's closer to 45 mins than it is an hour). If you were honest and compared the slower ferry with London City Airport, it's more like 9hrs vs 4hrs. And that's just the train! You also said people can get the coach or drive it, which is even slower again. I can be in Liverpool St station within 4 hrs of arriving at Dublin Airport. I've done it before, when the taxi to the airport broke down and I barely made the check-in window. If it's in the off-season, you wouldn't even be off the ferry after 4hrs and you'd have a 6hr+ drive in front of you. That's more than treble the travelling time. There's no way you could get your business done and return home the same day, which is why accommodation is a factor but not when flying.

Of course, the bigger point here is most people don't fly to London, even if it is the most common route out of Dublin.

What? Are you claiming more people use the overland route than the aerial one?

Someone else said you can't be expected to drive to Europe - but of course you can.

Not for cheaper, you can't, which is the entire basis for the discussion, no?

And not without accommodation, you can't.

And not without racking up the emissions from the car, you can't.

And not without quadrupling your travel time, you can't.

Let's say a ferry charges €60 for a sailing and an airline charges €50 for the same thing. The ferry effectively gets away with charging €10 more. Now you tax the airline ticket to bring the price to €100, the ferry isn't going to keep the €60 pricetag

My local petrol station definitely sold bottles of wine at 3am. Not exactly a high-class range (chateaux plonk stuff) and the usual petrol shop markup, but useful in an emergency as they say. Off-licenses tended to shut around midnight, don't know whether the likes of the Westmoreland St Centra sold 24 hours.