Business

Aer Lingus chief criticises DAA for not lodging interim application to lift passenger cap

The 32 million passenger cap is included in a 7,000-page wider infrastructure planning application to Fingal County Council

Lynne Embleton, centre, says DAA should have submitted a stand-alone planning application just relating to the passenger cap. Photograph: Naoise Culhane

Ciarán Hancock Business Editor
Thu Mar 14 2024 - 05:45

Aer Lingus chief executive Lynne Embleton has criticised Dublin Airport operator DAA for not submitting an interim application to planners to seek speedy relief on the present 32 million passenger cap at Dublin Airport. The DAA instead lodged a full-blown infrastructure application (IA) that is expected to take about two years or more to reach a conclusion.

The DAA’s IA, which was submitted to Fingal County Council in December 2023, is seeking a 15-year permission to build 11 distinct infrastructure projects at Dublin Airport as well as increasing the passenger capacity at the airport to 40 million a year. The application runs to more than 7,000 pages with about 700 drawings. The council sought further information from DAA on the IA on February 16th.

Speaking to The Irish Times, Ms Embleton said DAA should have submitted a stand-alone planning application just relating to the passenger cap.

“Right now there is an enormous document for planning permission, including infrastructure. That’s going to take a long time to work through. Our view is that there has to be an interim lifting of the cap while the bigger piece is worked through. If the cap is imposed, you are getting into billions of euro of economic damage [to the Irish economy] this year, next year and the year after,” she said.

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Ms Embleton was citicial about how DAA has handled the issue overall. “I don’t think they have handled it well. There was a cap reached, including transfer passengers, in 2019. The growth plans, at least of Aer Lingus, have been known to the DAA throughout. They can see the schedules, they can see the growth plans, they can talk to the airlines and they’ve also been out trying to get more carriers in.

“We have recruited people, we’ve got aircraft, we’ve got ground staff, we’ve got crew, we’ve got pilots to operate the schedule that we were well signalling, and then we’re coming up against a failure to act. We did a lot of things during Covid to get us ready to be a stronger business afterwards... when we didn’t have passengers, we were still getting on in looking ahead and planning our business. They [DAA] should have been using that time to get through all of those issues.”

Aer Lingus carried 9.2 million passengers through Dublin Airport last year, and expects to increase that figure by 300,000 in 2024, within the current cap. However, the current cap has scuppered its plans to grow passenger numbers through the airport to 10.2 million for 2025 and 10.6 million for 2026.

In response to Ms Embleton’s comments, a DAA spokesman said that “in hindsight, it would have been better if we could have submitted sooner but DAA’s plans to address this capacity restriction were delayed twice”, citing the 2008 global financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Our preference was to submit the infrastructure application sooner, but the IA and the North Runway Relevant Action Application could not be submitted at the same time for a number of technical and planning reasons, which were outside DAA’s control.

“In the interim, DAA focused on progressing the construction of North Runway within the planning window,” he said.

Ciarán Hancock

Ciarán Hancock

Ciarán Hancock is Business Editor of The Irish Times

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