The current state of Dublin airport is a "significant weakness" when it comes to Ireland attracting overseas investment, the IDA has claimed in a letter.
The organisation responsible for attracting overseas investment to the Republic said it wanted significant investment in the facility to deal with congestion and to present "a modern image of Ireland".
The letter was sent in recent weeks to the aviation regulator Cathal Guiomard by senior IDA executive Brendan McDonagh, department manager at the planning and business ecosystem division.
The IDA said the first thing potential investors see in Ireland is the airport. "In that respect a modern well-functioning and efficient Dublin airport is essential." The IDA said executives from overseas expected a strong airport service "at similar or lower cost to major airport centres around the world". It pointed out that statistics released by IMD in its World Competitiveness Yearbook 2005 ranked Ireland and Dublin poorly, well below such locations as Singapore, Denmark, Switzerland and Hungary. IMD is the Lausanne-based executive college.
"This is a significant weakness in light of the importance of air transport infrastructure to the IDA, both in terms of an entry point for executives of client companies and also in terms of access to import-export distribution channels for IDA client companies."
The agency said it supported plans to develop additional capacity at the airport. These plans by the Dublin Airport Authority include a new Pier D facility and a second terminal measuring up to 75,000sq m.
The DAA has maintained for some time that it can seriously reduce congestion if it is given the chance to add capacity and allowed to make a reasonable return on its existing facilities.
The Air France subsidiary Cityjet has also written to the aviation regulator and says some increase in passenger charges may be needed to pay for new infrastructure.
"The infrastructure requirements are quite broad and include Pier D, Terminal 2, Pier E, additional remote parking areas, additional and dual taxiways and an additional parallel runway. Cityjet recognises that this level of investment does require airport charges to be set at a reasonable level so that these costs can be recovered," writes its chief executive Geoffrey O'Byrne White. He says delays in infrastructure like Pier D are not the fault of the DAA management.
The Irish Tourist Industry Confederation, which represents all sectors of the tourist trade, also said the DAA could not have predicted the rising demands of the airlines at Dublin airport. "The DAA could only determine the scale of the airport development when they had been advised by the airlines of their new expansion plans, and when they [ the DAA] had satisfied themselves as to the robustness of these plans."
